Blow some hot air, make beautiful music at organ fundraiser
The Redshift Music Society is known for performances that take contemporary classical music into unique spaces to achieve amazing results, from a show in Mountain View Cemetery ’s Celebration Hall to the new music for water and glass instruments presented at City Of Water, Sea of Glass.
The organization includes the Negative Zed and Driftwood Percussion ensembles, as well as the 16-speaker/16-channel Redshift Array.
It doesn’t own a pipe organ. Since 2016, Redshift vice-president Michael Park has been the musical director at Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Vancouver. Holy Trinity is home to a 1912 heritage Casavant organ Opus 485. Maintaining and restoring the instrument is a big expense.
“The organ has long-term water damage, which will take a great deal of money to actually rebuild, and the church has been in challenging financial situations for a while,” said Park. “So we really need to raise some funds to keep the organ operational in the more immediate time frame.”
To that end, Park came up with the idea of the Bouncy Castle Extravaganza.
The public event that’s open to all ages will provide people with the opportunity to power up organ pipes — ranging from eight inches to eight feet — using the air in a bouncy castle, beach balls, air mattresses and more.
Besides playing pipes, the day will feature several tours of the historic church building, performances on the heritage organ, and information sessions with members of the Royal Canadian College of Organists.
Thanks to a recent acquisition of an Orgelkids organ kit, folks can take part in building a functioning organ, too.
“The previous organist collected pipes from St. Andrews-Wesley and a church in Victoria and the choir room is about half full of pipes of all sizes, many of which are too damaged to be usable on an actual pipe organ,” said Park.
“David Quinton, who has been a member here for years, is also a pipe organ technician. We asked him what we could do with them. He motioned to a vacuum cleaner and said we could reverse the motor on it and drive the air to make sound in the pipe.”
Quinton noted you could use just about anything to power a pipe. Park let his mind wander to think of the silliest thing he could and came up with a bouncy castle. The consensus was that it was a cool idea.
“Redshift is always doing fun things. When I pitched them the idea, it was a no-brainer,” said Park.
“It’s not a traditional organ with a keyboard, but the air from the bouncy castle reservoir will power the pipe that you choose to plug into it and you can enjoy it as you bounce. Think of it as an interactive sound installation.”
This incredibly fun sound installation will be located in the gymnasium-style hall. There will be the bouncy castle and an assortment of other inflatables, too. Members of the public bring their own, as well.
“We’ll also have some snacks, a popcorn machine and a balloon artist, because why not?” he said.
“It should be pretty interesting and, hopefully, generate some funds to work on the organ.”