City Blogs: Music Blog

April 8, 2008 at 12:59pm

MUSIC REVIEW: Baroque Organ Concert

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The free organ concerts that the Memorial Art Gallery hosts every Sunday aren't your typical display of boogaloo grooves pumping out of a Hammond B-3 in some smoke-filled juke joint.  Not even the instrument is the same. The organ in one of the rooms on the MAG's second floor is massive, yet curiously small  - the pipes stretch 15 feet or more into the air, and a small keyboard, like those handheld Casios, is built waist high into the wall. In an adjacent room a girl worked the bellows, pushing the air through the organ's pipes by stepping back and forth on two wooden plates attached to pulleys and levers. It's as if she were on a wooden Stairmaster, methodically moving to keep the gates of sound open and pouring Baroque sounds into the museum.

On Sunday, April 6, organist David Bellows sat in front of about 20 listeners to perform his second show of the day at the MAG. He worked through two Frescobaldi pieces - "Toccata Quinta" and "Tocata per le leuatione, Messa Della Domenica" - setting the musical mood for viewing the paintings of Christ, angels, and other typical Catholic themes that dotted the walls.  He danced his way around the foot pedals that triggered deep bass notes and hit chords that used to call parishioners to mass on Sundays.  Frescobaldi, after all, was the organist at St. Peter's in Rome in the early 1600's.

Bellows finished out the hour with Zipoli's "Pastorale" and Gherardeschi's "Sonata per Organo a guisa di Banda Militare"; both written about 100 years after the first two selections. The afternoon was Baroque in every way - Baroque art on the walls, Baroque sounds swirling around the air, and a manually run instrument.

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Ben Toland said:

YOU GUYS RULE! Awesome show, Awesome time, I LOVE seeing you guys get props <3 Stay sexy!

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Lovin' me some Prickers! :-)

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WE love our Prickers out here in Naples!! Way to go guys!!

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Augustin Hadelich studied with JOEL SMIRNOFF at Juilliard.

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