Orem Organs - And Salt Lake to come soon!

I'll explain the Salt Lake part first:

Yesterday I participated in an Open Console and Organ Crawl event in Salt Lake City at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral and the Historic Tabernacle on Temple Square. I had the opportunity to play both of these wonderful instruments, and enjoy the music and company of some wonderful and talented organists. 

I will write a longer, more detailed post about this shortly, I am waiting to get some pictures back from another AGO member who brought a nicer camera than I did.

In the meantime, I thought I would post pictures and information about a couple more organs in Orem that I played last Summer. 

This first one is one of the larger pipe organs in an LDS chapel, at 17 ranks. It is located in the Sharon Stake Center in Orem, UT, and was built by the Wicks organ company in 1969. It recently underwent renovation and restoration, to ensure its performance for years to come.

Here's a photo of the facade:

As you can see, there are a LOT more pipes than are typical for your typical LDS Chapel Wicks Facade. There are usually only a couple ranks visible, but this has at least three or four open to the room.

One interesting thing about this organ is the types of the 17 ranks. Prior to this, the largest organ I had seen in an LDS chapel was 13 ranks, but it had a Rohr Schalmei, a great 16' Trompette in the pedal division, and 16' Gemshorn in the Great. It was more eclectic in its tonal design than this organ, at least to my inexperienced ear. So you can see that I was pretty excited to see what kinds of interesting stops I would find on this organ. Sadly for me, most of these additional ranks had been used for different types of flute stops. Not that I don't love a good Nachthorn, but I think this organ could have been made more tonally diverse, and therefore more versatile, by replacing one or two of those flute ranks with an interesting solo reed, such as an Oboe or Clarinet, or extending the pedal down to an actual 32' rather than just a resultant*. I still like this organ a lot, but I am admittedly puzzled by the tonal design.

*A resultant is two ranks of pipes that reproduce the overtones of a lower rank. They are used for 32' stops with a 16' and a 13 2/3' rank, or for a 64', a stop called a Gravissima. 

So here's my selfie, with excitetement, before I found out there was no oboe. Console is located behind the pulpit to the right (stage left), as it is in most LDS buildings.

After I finished at the Sharon Stake, I went to another nearby chapel, the LDS Orem Stonewood Stake Center, and was pleasantly surprised by a 9-rank 1994 Wicks organ. Its tonal quality is a lot nicer than those of the older Wicks organs, especially those from the 1970s, but it's no Schantz. I like this organ very much, but I didn't have a lot of time to get to know it, so I only got a couple of blurry pictures, since it was late and I needed to get going.

So here's the selfie of that one:

And here's a wider shot of the chapel. There are 41 pipes in the Facade, which I'm pretty sure is a principal, with the rest behind the gray screens just behind the main facade.

Overall, I would be happy to play either of these instruments every Sunday if I had the chance, but if I had been the one in charge when they were installed and designed, I would have done things just a little differently: I would have chosen a more eclectic tonal design for the Sharon organ, and for the Stonewood organ, I may have chosen a different builder if it had been within the budget.

Have a great Sunday everyone, and I'll be back with more pictures soon!

LDS Sharon Stake Center:

Built By: Wicks Organ Company

Opus Number (if indicated):

Year: 1969

Manuals: 2

Ranks: 17

Location: 545 South 800 East, Orem, UT

Sharon Stake Center - Stoplist

LDS Orem Utah Stonewood Stake Center:

Built By: Wicks Organ Company

Opus Number (if indicated):

Year: 1994

Manuals: 2

Ranks: 9

Location: 450 South 100 West, Orem, UT