St. Gabriel The Archangel Catholic Church

St. Gabriel The Archangel Catholic Church

Saddle River, New Jersey

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This new organ enjoys a fine acoustic and a very fine and friendly musical family at St. Gabriel Church. We are grateful to Rev. Monsignor Robert J. Fuhrman, Director of Music Joseph Scorese, and Associate Director of Music and Organist Richard D'Amore for their confidence in us. Please stop in and see this new instrument, our first in New Jersey and the New York City area.

Consultant for the project was Jonathan Ambrosino.

The new organ was dedicated in concert by Ken Cowan on June 7, 2009. Mr. Cowan played a varied program including works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Karg-Elert, Bingham, Guilmant, and Widor. The capacity crowd was very vocal in its appreciation and demands for encore.

(Church photos by Richard D'Amore)

This organ has an unusual physical layout which takes advantage of the unique and limited gallery space, and addresses extensive needs of the significant choral music program of the church. The photos here illustrate the challenging 11' height in the gallery. The Great and Pedal choruses are in the cases on the rail. The rail cases are actually suspended at mid case from structure behind them, and do not cut through the rail. The enclosed divisions are behind the choir seating in an unobtrusive case. The 16' open wood Diapason is built with Haskell bass pipes and is at the rear of the center case. The console sits among the choir seats and is movable throughout the gallery.

Pipe shades have been carved by Spirit of Wood Sculpture by Spirit. Nestled into the vines and leaves, attentive observers will notice the figures of St. Gabriel on the far right pipe shade and St. Mary on the far left shade which echo the Annunciation scene in the High Altar of the church.

The specification of the organ illustrates one of our concepts for achieving flexibility in a medium size instrument, while retaining musical integrity. The basic organ is a large 2 manual instrument with independent principal, flute and reed choruses in each division. These elements are then enclosed where appropriate (Great partially enclosed separate from the Swell) and carefully borrowed to maximize versatility for use in liturgy, choral works and organ literature. A third Solo manual is provided on which many of the stops from both the Great and Swell may be played independently from their home manual.

Below, is the Sanctuary console built and installed in 2011.

Click here for information on Spirit Sculptures

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