1998 Glatter-Götz; Rosales organ at Claremont United Church of Christ, California

We sound the trumpet this week on Pipedreams as we visit Claremont United Church of Christ in California to celebrate an extraordinary artistic partnership. American organbuilder Manuel Rosales created the tonal design and finishing for this new organ, which was built by Casper Glatter-Goetz of Germany. The results are remarkable, as you’ll hear in inaugural season recital performance by Cherry Rhodes and Ladd Thomas, resident musician Carey Coker-Robertson, and Parisian soloist Daniel Roth. Plus Diane Meredith Belcher shows off the incredible Claremont trumpets in a piece written specially for them.

We reflect on the passing of time on our next Pipedreams broadcast. The old year now is gone and done. So are a number of wonderful musical friends whom we will honor and miss. But, we’ll also celebrate some intriguing new instruments, check up on the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia for a progress report on the ongoing restoration there, sample some recent recordings - including a disc which just won a ‘golden ears’ award from a popular audiophile journal and stop down in Mexico, where fireworks and the village band added to the excitement of a visit from some Norwegian performers.

Composer and critic Virgil Thomson had the right idea. For him, regardless of style or attitude, if a piece of music was written by an American it qualified as American Music. And that’s what you’ll hear on our next Pipedreams program. There’ll be several zesty settings of popular hymns, jazzy toccatas, and dances including a boogie-woogie, picturesque scenes, historic take-offs, and even a profound Passacaglia, played on sonorous instruments by Rosales, Skinner, Hendrickson, and Wurlitzer. From California to Connecticut, from Bingham to Bitgood, ours is a coast-to-coast survey of colorful organ scores. Frances Nobert, Diane Belcher, James Biery, Diana Lee Lucker, and Charlie Balogh with the Wichita State University Jazz Ensemble are all part of the party as we sample American Perspectives, this week on Pipedreams.

We explore things new and engaging on our next Pipedreams program, sampling recent releases of organ music on CD, including a jazzy Te Deum from Germany, the sound of praise today. With saxophone? Sure. Plus we’ll have trumpet voluntaries featuring festival reed stops on instruments in Kilgore, Texas; Hendersonville, North Carolina; and Chartres, France. The 1930 Skinner organ at Holy Rosary Cathedral in Toledo, Ohio, is at its best under the hands of Todd Wilson, but really old is the 1730 Trost organ at Waltershausen, Germany, playing music by a kid who grew up just west of there, Johann Sebastian Bach. Would Bach have approved? Absolutely, because he knew the builder of this instrument and loved his work. These and other stunning sounds from cathedrals in Toledo, Ohio, and Saint Louis, Missouri, and a jazz-friendly congregation in Stuttgart are all part of the plan. We’re Going on Record with CDs in review, this week on Pipedreams.

The pipe organ offers a player a rainbow of sonorous hues from which to draw, and while our next Pipedreams program exploits such opportunity, we also deal with a different facet of color. During the past century, composers such as William Grant Still, Thomas Kerr, Ulysses Kay, and Florence Price have made sizeable, if sometimes unheralded, contributions to the concert repertoire of the king of instruments. Whether in abstract visions or classical forms, responding to main-stream themes or spiritual influences, theirs is an important voice, as you’ll discover listening to a dozen remarkable works recorded by James Abbington, David Oliver, Mark Miller, Lucius Weathersby, Mickey Thomas Terry, and friends. Color me intrigued by the richness and variety of music for pipe organ by African American composers. Is it a paradox that we experience the full range of color In Black and White? The African American impulse, this week on Pipedreams.

Famous also for his superb improvisations and exacting teaching methods, today we remember him through his compositions. This week’s show explores fourteen virtuosic and poetic movements from the pen of French wizard Marcel Dupré. We’ll hear the three Preludes & Fugues of Opus 7 that set the world afire when he was but 26, four of his Opus 50 Inventions, ironic miniatures, concise as an Oriental haiku, and the Seven Pieces which he wrote during his tours in the 1920s and dedicated to friends he made along the way. In his twenties he astonished the world with virtuosity, by his thirties he’d amazed us with his depth, and throughout his career we regarded him as the best there was. The great man himself teams up with his former students and advocates in a musical offering of Seven Pieces, times two.

Rather than fugues and canzonas, try a Pastorale Dance or a March with trumpet. On this week’s show, we temper European tradition with the iconoclastic visions of some composers here at in the U.S. Lukas Foss writes a celebratory choral work for a new church, Lee Hoiby sketches impressions of his California homeland, and Daniel Gawthrop has us kicking up our heals in rhythmic response. Beyond toccatas and tientos, we bring our focus closer to home and celebrate The American Muse.

Performers and instruments in the United States transform a global collection of holiday melodies.

…history has been slow to acknowledge the evidence that women composers have accomplished plenty.

…some stories, with and without words, prove that music’s universal language is completely comprehensible.

…winners of the Mader Competition in California and the St. Alban’s Competition in England show a way to the future for the King of Instruments.

…in anticipation of Women's Equality Day, a program to showcase women composers and organists.

…the annual Olde Yeare–New Year reflection, with highlights from recent recordings, concert excerpts, prize–winning performances, memorial tributes and more.

…bold and brazen are the organ’s trumpet pipes, and the ensemble that pits its energy against the King of Instruments!

…some stories, with and without words, prove that music’s universal language is completely comprehensible.

…though some instruments were specifically created to accompany silent films, pipe organs have proven that they can tackle movie music of any sort!

…focusing on Robert Bates’ new recording of Correa’s Facultad Organica (1626).

…across the centuries, women composers have shared their exceptional creativity.

…and have proven themselves exceptional performers and composers, whom we celebrate on International Women's Day during Women's History Month.

A summing up of the past year, with celebrations and memorial tributes, highlights of some exceptional recordings, and some glimpses into the future.

a quarterly review of recent organ recordings, drawing from the incredible variety of new and interesting materials which are available to music lovers these days.