A significant upgrade to our choral, organ, worship, and concert life will be made this year with a vestry-endorsed project to reconfigure the console of the glorious Miller-Scott organ. The reconfiguration will enable our wonderful instrument to be much more efficient in daily rehearsal, and more effective for daily liturgies and worship, while dramatically enhancing the experience for concert-goers.
Scheduled to be completed by the Saint Thomas bicentennial in 2023, the project is designed to help our community celebrate its heritage while we also look to the future. The beautifully carved organ console, currently hidden from much of congregation and concert-going audience, will be moved to the Nave and be made mobile, allowing the organist to be visible to our concert audiences from a central location.
Concurrently, we have commissioned a second console for daily liturgical use which will situate the player so that he or she will be able to hear and see the choir during both worship and, perhaps just as importantly, rehearsals. The completion of this project will bring closure to the installation of the Dobson organ, which began in 2018.
Organist and Director of Music, Dr. Jeremy Filsell, tells us the following:
The advantage of the console being in the church is two-fold: one, that it permits the concert audience to have visual as well as aural contact with the player, and two, that it allows the player (recitalist) to ‘balance’ and hear the instrument properly. The current alcove position for the organ console was established in the 1920s when 90% of the pipework was situated opposite on the north side of the chancel. Since 2018, 80% of the pipework has been on the south side, above and behind the player, meaning that the problems of playing and balancing the instrument are manifold.
The new console will be installed in its original position, as intended by Ernest Skinner in 1913 (see picture below) at the western end of the southern choir stalls. This location will permit both aural ‘contact’ for the organist and thus choir rehearsal efficiency.
Dobson Organs are undertaking this work to be ready in time for our initial bicentennial musical events. The funding for this is made possible through the generous benefaction of Christopher King, a Danbury organist who loved the music of Saint Thomas and its Choir School. We look forward to it benefiting the choir, organists, visiting recitalists and enhancing substantially our concert experience.
