(3.11) And it’s free. University organist and senior lecturer in music, Mark Steinbach, will perform music of Bach, Buxtehude, Hindemith, and the rarely performed “Harmonies” by Ligeti on the 1903 Hutchings-Votey pipe organ in Sayles Hall. (Facebook event.)
The Hutchings-Votey organ weighs 25 tons. Pound-for-pound it’s the top H-V Organ (of its type)!
The organ in Sayles Hall was a gift in 1903 of Lucian Sharpe 1893 in memory of his parents. His letter to President Faunce offering the gift stipulated that the instrument should be selected by Professor Joseph N. Ashton and Dr. Jules Jordan. To receive the organ, which weighed about 25 tons, the old gallery in Sayles Hall was replaced by a new one with a projecting center, under the direction of architects Stone, Carpenter and Willson. The organ was built by the Hutchings-Votey Organ Company of Boston and has more than three thousand pipes. . . The latest restoration by the Potter-Rathbun Company of Cranston was undertaken in 1990. The Brown organ is now the largest remaining Hutchings-Votey organ of its type, as the others have been dismantled and replaced rather than repaired.
Free and open to the public, 4pm to 6pm, Sunday, March 11, Sayles Hall, Main Green, Brown University, 75 Waterman Street, (directions)