Big expense

Fundraising concert will help pay for repairs on church’s pipe organ

KITCHENER — As St. Matthews Lutheran Church was busy reinventing itself as a music venue, the magnificent 1943 Casavant organ decided to test the new program.

“We had to replace the bellows,” said Bob Karn, one of the church’s board members. “We have four rooms of pipes, 2,958 pipes and they’re all over the place.

“To even get at it, you have to take all the pipes out.”

This meant a big expense, $8,000 in total, paid to the specialized organ repair firm, Dodington & Dodington from Aylmer. Like most large old churches, however, funds are rather scarce. They had to dip into the church’s current operating fund which is meant to cover expenses such as heat, hydro and salaries, and it’s all carefully budgeted. So how to recoup those costs? A concert, of course.

On Saturday the church will shift it’s music-making to Kitchener’s Schwaben Club for a fundraising concert “Pipes, Strings & Horns” featuring the nine-piece R&B and classic rock band, “Group Therapy & the OCD Horns” along with Turkishborn Flamenco guitarist Juneyt and Flamenco dancer Ishra.

“We had decided to go ahead with the repairs,” said Karn, remembering the highly skilled repair team spending a full week to first mark and remove all the pipes, replace the bellows with new leathsame ers, then put the pipes back in exactly the position.

It wasn’t the bellows that were expensive, it was the darned work getting at them, but this organ is St. Matthews’ jewel, a rare instrument where the handmade pipes are placed all around the sanctuary.

“It’s in the top 10 in Ontario in terms of the number of pipes and the sound,” said Karn.

When music director, Corinne Dutton plays, the sound fills the 1914 neo-Gothic cathedral-style church with its wide arches and spectacular wood finishes.

As Karn said, this church is comparable to the old cathedrals in Europe, only on a slightly smaller scale but equal in the importance of music.

A concert at the church last November, featuring Juneyt and classical guitar legend Liona Boyd, was pretty much sold out, boosting the church’s confidence that they can do it again. This time, however, they

CONTRIBUTED Group Therapy & the OCD Horns.

ST. MATTHEWS LUTHERAN CHURCH Earlier this year, one of the leather "breathers" or bellows in the St. Matthews pipe organ developed a tear. Access to this worn-out leather required the removal of many pipes and other hardware just to get at it.