This Kitchener teen has pipe dreams
Joshua Ehlebracht wants you to love the organ like you love guitar or piano
Joshua Ehlebracht’s fingers fly over keys and knobs and his purple shoes dance over the pedal board of his favourite pipe organ. On this day inside St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in downtown Kitchener, the result is electrifying.
John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” with its thrilling, head-bobbing, marchingband crescendo, almost blows the roof off the church where the gifted 19-year-old organist spent the summer as music director.
St. Peter’s three-manual (keyboard) Hallman pipe organ has about 2,500 pipes and 47 ranks, each of which has a different sound.
This organ is one of Ehlebracht’s favourites, partly because he grew up with the instrument in this church where his father, Rev. Mark Ehlebracht, is pastor.
He knows all the tricks to make it sing.
“It packs quite a punch. Especially when the humidity is up, the sound is loud and ramped up. I love it,” Ehlebracht says.
Switching gears, he then begins to play a lush, sombre piece, J.S. Bach’s “Come Sweet Death, Come Blessed Rest,” arranged by Virgil Fox.
“It’s not fast and flashy but when you listen to it, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. There’s a massive buildup, then the sound diminishes, “almost like death coming.”
“It’s an amazing piece of music that makes you sit in awe. It’s heavier and pulls a lot of emotion in me when I’m playing it.”
This is Ehlebracht, a friendly, articulate young man capable of coaxing such sweetness and depth from the pipe organ at the same time that he can rock the bench with a piece that makes you want to stand up and cheer.
He has a keen desire to bring the organ to life for people who know it only by church hymns.
“People don’t understand it’s not just designed for church hymns. I see it as an instrument that everyone could love like they love the guitar and piano,” he says.
At St. Peter’s last summer, where the congregation is accustomed to music director Peter Nikiforuk’s exemplary musicianship, Ehlebracht didn’t disappoint. They gave him a standing ovation on an August Sunday before he headed back to school.
“This kid just knocked me out,” St. Peter’s choir member Kathleen Beattie says. “Every time he performs, he pulls something out of his back pocket. For the last verse of each hymn, he’d blow off something I’d never heard before. He just makes it up. Do you have any idea how extraordinary that is?
“It’s almost like he’s inside the organ.”
Now, in his second year at Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, Ehlebracht’s dream is to be a concert organist and teacher who introduces mainstream audiences to an instrument he loves.
Take a look at YouTube and you’ll get the idea. When he was only 17, Ehlebracht arranged a Phantom of the Opera medley for a friend that was approaching 100,000 views.
Listen to the classical pieces, too, less popular among YouTube listeners but played with equal confidence and energy. You’ll understand that this is a musician with a gift, with depth and a sense of fun.
The eldest of three children, Ehlebracht is the whirlwind who rarely sits still.
“He really comes alive with the loud stuff and solos where he’s really dripping with sweat when he’s done,” says his mother, Karen Ehlebracht, a registered nurse.
It’s unusual for a teenager to declare a passion for the pipe organ, but Josh Hill, head of music at Cameron Heights, discovered Ehlebracht was a “really brilliant musician.”