Our Good Friday devotion, which was due to be live a Knox United Church, Durham, is now a recorded version on YouTube.

The direct link for the video is here and the service program is here. Thanks to all those involved in producing the service.

Sadly, due to the current changing Covid situation it has been decided that our Good Friday service that was due to be in person will now be online. More details to follow shortly.

I expect most of our musicians have been busy over the Lent weeks, and preparing for Holy Week and Easter. As part of the GBRCCO tradition, we are again offering our Good Friday service “Harmonies in the Midst of Madness and Miracle”. A number of our members will be playing and the service is at 4:00pm at Knox United Church, Durham.

It only seems a short time ago we were looking for Christmas music, now it is already time to start thinking about Lent, Holy Week and Easter music! As a group the Grey/Bruce RCCO organists normally come together to put on our Good Friday “Harmonies in the Midst of Madness and Miracle” offering. Due to Covid the last two years had to be cancelled, but we are hoping to be back this year at Knox United Church in Durham.

I have started recording pieces for a series of Lent Reflections, these also have been online due to Covid for our congregation last year, and again this year. I find it interesting to play different settings of some of those great Lent hymn tunes. Here is an example of a setting of Wondrous Love by David N. Johnson from the Augsburg Organ Library – Series II – Lent.

Here is a recent article/interveiw/concert about Dr. Patricia Wright who has been playing the organ at the Metropolitan United Church in Toronto for the last 30+ years. The link is here. Enjoy.

Here we are at the start of another New Year, again restricted due to ongoing Covid issues. Hopefully everyone is managing to stay well and reasonably sane, perhaps enjoying some relaxing organ music. It could be the ideal time to catch up with some concerts or podcasts, perhaps check out the FutureStops podcasts – there 25 half hour podcasts to choose from.

I was interested in the one with Roger Sayer and the use of the pipe organ in the soundtrack to the 2014 film Interstellar, with music by Hans Zimmer. Roger was organist at my local cathedral, Rochester, when I lived in the UK. I remember going there every week for a few months when he was doing weekly recitals covering all the organ works of J.S.Bach.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas and New Year. Hopefully you can enjoy the Christmas season and stay safe and well during the ongoing pandemic. It is a special time for organ music and despite a lot of events being cancelled the upside is there is a lot of music now online, here are a few to enjoy ..

Jonathan Scott – 2021 recital from Hull City Hall, UK

Richard Cook – 2021 recital from St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, UK

Richard McVeigh – 2021 Christmas Lesson, Carols and Organ Music.

As a member of both the RCO and RCCO it is always interesting to see what is happening on the other side of the pond. If you get a moment it is worth checking out the YouTube channel for the RCO. The six episodes from the “Organ Show” series from earlier this year are worth watching.

There is a good history in Grey/Bruce of organs being rehomed, or redundant parts being reused. Over the last couple of weeks our local organ technicians, John and Steve Tite, have been rehoming a nice two manual, 3 rank, pipe organ into Knox Presbyterian Church, Burgoyne, ON. The organ was originally in St. Thomas Anglican Church in Owen Sound, ON. The congregation of St. Thomas amalgamated with St. Georges Anglican Church in Owen Sound in 2017 and the building was finally sold off and at that point the organ was removed and has spent a couple of years in a local barn. Now it is getting a new life, here are a few images of it being installed, courtesy of Steve.

Our first survey in the four-part “Animating Worship (What Worship Leaders Need to Know)” course is coming to its completion– we’ve surveyed Christian Music, historic to contemporary, in both the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity, using Wilson-Dickson’s The Story of Christian Music as our basic text, and supplementing it with Michele Evdokimov’s Two Martyrs in a Godless World and Lim and Ruth’s Lovin’ on Jesus.

This survey is part of a continuing online journey of study that you can board at any time.

The winter survey is a basic course on worship patterns in the Western Church, with James F White’s Introduction to Christian Worship, Third Edition and Lim and Ruth’s Lovin’ on Jesus as our core texts. The White text is a standard among seminarians; Lim and Ruth continue the White text from roughly AD2000 through the present.

If you or anyone you know would like to join this segment of the course, please spread the word, and have them email me, fatherwagner@aol.com. I’m very happy to communicate with anybody interested!