Calling all organ lovers: North Shore communities to host recitals as part of regional convention
A four-day organ festival is coming to several North Shore communities this Sunday through Wednesday.
Activities include recitals in Glenview, Northbrook, Glencoe, Evanston, Wilmette and Winnetka. All recitals are open to the public.
Andrea Handley, coordinator of the American Guild of Organists' Great Lakes Regional Convention, said organizers will be pulling out all the stops.
The pipe organ has multiple keyboards, pedals and stops, or knobs.
"In terms of the construction, one person can make more music on an organ than on any other single instrument because they're controlling thousands of sounds by pressing just one key," said Handley, the organist at Trinity United Methodist Church in Wilmette made famous by the movie "Home Alone." "You can be causing air to come into hundreds of pipes by pressing one key."
The guild's seven regionals hold conventions every two years, on odd-numbered years with a national convention held on even-numbered years. In 2022, the national convention was held in Seattle; in 2024 it'll be in San Francisco.
The guild's North Shore chapter hosted its last Great Lakes Regional Convention - covering Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio - in 1989. The national convention came to Chicago in 2006, Handley said.
Preparations for this year's event began in 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted plans for a 2021 convention.
All 12 members of the Great Lakes steering committee re-enlisted to finish what they started.
"We've been planning this for five years," Handley said.
All but one of the recitals will be played on pipe organ.
At 7:30 p.m. Sunday, organist Eric Budzynski and a chamber orchestra conducted by Stephen Alltop open the convention with works by French composers at Northwestern University's Alice Millar Chapel, 1870 Sheridan Road, Evanston.
Budzynski has been a resident or guest organist in Oxford and London, England, and in Paris. Alltop is the senior lecturer of conducting and ensembles at Northwestern's Bienen School of Music.
At 11 a.m. Monday, Wylie Crawford, resident carillonneur for the Chicago Botanic Garden, will play the 48-bell Theodore C. Butz Memorial Carillon. The performance is free for Botanic Garden members, but nonmembers must pay for parking and admittance to the garden, 1000 Lake-Cook Road, Glencoe.
On Tuesday, Stephen Buzard, music director at St. James Cathedral in Chicago, will perform 20th century French music at 9:15 and 10:45 a.m. at Glenview Community Church, 1000 Elm St., Glenview.
Buzard will play an organ installed in 1999 and built by his father, John-Paul Buzard of Buzard Pipe Organ in Champaign.
"It kind of feels like going home in a sense," said Stephen Buzard, who last played this organ in 2012.
Also at 9:15 and 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, Yun Kim will play music from the Renaissance era to contemporary selections on the 1994 Hellmuth Wolff organ at Saint Giles Episcopal Church, 3025 Walters Ave., Northbrook.
A graduate of Indiana University's acclaimed Jacobs School of Music, Kim is the prizewinning organist and director of music at Christ Episcopal Church in Dayton, Ohio.
Handley said the opening and closing events typically draw the most interest. They cost $25 as opposed to $10 for the other programs on the schedule, except the Chicago Botanic Garden event.
At 8 p.m. Wednesday, the convention finale features Vincent Dubois in a European program including Mozart, Franck, Schumann, Saint-Saëns and other composers at First Presbyterian Church of Evanston, 1427 Chicago Ave.
Dubois is one of three main organists at Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral in addition to being a professor of the instrument in Germany and a guest soloist with symphony orchestras in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas and Hong Kong.
For more information and details on other recitals, visit nsago2023.org.