New pipe organ for Elizabeth

The Elizabeth neighborhood is getting a new pipe organ, made in Quebec.
The parts arrive at St. Johns Baptist Church on Sunday, Jan. 27, and church members will help unload the pieces from a truck and bring them into the sanctuary after the 10:30 a.m. service.

The church, at the corner of Hawthorne Lane and Fifth Street, is providing lunch for helpers. See more pictures of the organ being built here.

Through February and March, the organ, called Opus 113, will be assembled in the renovated sanctuary, and the organ pipes will get their new "voices" with testing. Organ builders will work six days a week, giving a "voice" to each of the more-than 2,500 pipes. It makes its debut in Easter services on March 23.

The organ is from the Sainte-Hyacinthe, Quebec, factory of highly respected Letourneau Organs. (Hint: You really want to click on the company link to see and listen to other organs the company has built.)

Letourneau Organs has built organs for Christ Church in Vienna, Austria, and the chapel at Selwyn College at Cambridge, England. Its new magnum opus is at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Divine in Houston.

Questions? Contact Minister of Music Warren Howell through the church office at (704) 333-5428.
Photo courtesy of Warren and Maureen Howell, taken in summer 2007, showing some of the wooden pipes of the church's organ being crafted at the Sainte-Hyacinthe factory.