Organ Concert

Sun, 13 Feb 2005 23:59:59 -800

Les Garrett, of Lewis and Clark College, gave an organ concert at the First Presbyterian Church of Portland this afternoon.
I braved some pretty bad weather to get there--despite the sunny 45 degree
weather, it was hailing in downtown Portland! The short ninety-minute concert
featured several pieces by German and French composers of the early 1700s as
well as some church-oriented works by Bach. Wrapping up the concert was Bach's
Passacaglia (BWV 582). The church has a mighty pipe organ with nearly
3,515 tubes and some ~50 different voices. Amazingly, the entire system is
controlled manually by pushrod--there was a big stack of rods rising to the
upper organ chamber; this stack reminded me of the parallel yarns on a loom.