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No longer a city boy

This past Saturday I discovered that I could no longer consider myself as a city boy – not because I am not young any longer, but because for some time I have lived in a small town.

I have gotten used to being able to leave home only about 5 to 10 minutes before I need to be at any location in Marshall. And that is pretty much true unless there happens to be a parade on Main Street. I came to the realization I was no longer a city boy when at about 10 p.m. I tried to find my way around the University of Minnesota and parts of Minneapolis trying to get onto Interstate 35W south. Minneapolis is not a town. It is a city.

In the past, I seldom was intimidated by large amounts of traffic, large and multiple buildings of offices or apartments, crowds of people on the streets or in audiences (think arenas, stadiums, music concerts, parades, etc.) For some reason the intimidation factor has taken over my thoughts.

My problem Saturday evening was intimidation from trying to follow the detour signs. I think they had left up a few of the direction signs that had worked before construction began. I also noticed that there were signs that read I-35W, but did not clearly mark whether they were for north or south.

Note here that the W in I-35W is not a direction in which to travel except that in parts of downtown (another anomaly — we say downtown not downcity) the highway is positioned as going east-west.

Then I also ran across two signs that just said “DETOUR” with an arrow below, but not specifying whether the detour was for I-35W. Eventually I found myself about five miles north of downtown and traveling farther north. Amazing how far you can go in just a couple of minutes doing the 5 mph above the speed limit that seems to be necessary to keep out of other vehicles’ paths.

I was able to eventually find an exit that allowed me to eventually reverse direction and get onto I-35W heading south.

jtr

My reason for being in Minneapolis was for a special event held at Northrop Hall on the University of Minnesota campus. The occasion was for the rededication of the Aeolian-Skinner Pipe Organ (opus 892) that was just rebuilt.

The main organist, Paul Jacobs, is the only solo organist to be awarded a Grammy. He recently completed performances held in all 50 of the United States as well as performing in other countries.

The organ was originally built between 1932 and 1936. It has 6,982 pipes the smallest of which is about the size of a pencil and the largest pipe is 32 feet high. It has 108 ranks of pipes (i.e. common sound), 81 stops, 225 controls, pedal board and 4 keyboards. It is the third largest such organ in the United States. The rebuilding of the organ began in 2011.

The organ console was at front center of the stage in front of the conductor. The pipes were housed four stories above the organist and the stage, set behind a porous screen so not visible to the audience, but the sound easily filled and surrounded the audience from very soft, delicate sounding notes to booming bass notes.

The arrangement of the pipes being so far away from the player is not unusual, but it does add complications for when the organ is accompanying the orchestra. The complication is because the organist must judge the very slight delay for the sound made from pressing a key to travel down and out to be in sync with the music from the rest of the orchestra instruments played at stage level.

The organist’s back is toward the audience and watching Jacobs I realized what good physical condition he must be in to accomplish his playing. At times his hands were on different keyboards and moving to other keyboards at the same time that each foot also was moving to hit the notes from the pedal board. At times I thought Jacobs might have been helped if his legs had been a bit longer as he had to slide back and forth on the seat in order to hit the pedal board on the left and then quickly on the right as well.

jtr

The Main Hall of Northrop originally had seating for 4847, but the acoustics were not good for music, so It had been redesigned after its first performances in 1929 including the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (renamed the Minnesota Orchestra in 1968.)

Seating was reduced to 2700. The latest refurbishing was in 2011 at a cost of $88 million. That remodeling included adding the 168 seat Best Buy Theater which is located under the sloping third balcony of the Main Hall.

The Minneapolis Symphony played its first orchestra performance just after Baseball’s First World Series on Nov. 5, 1903 and before the Wright Brothers’ First Flight in December 1903.

jtr

I wish I had a more thorough grounding in the history of organs including the old pump organ, reed organs, harmoniums, etc. Theater organs are also different from the pipe organ I described. Possibly the most famous theater organ is one at NYC’s Radio City Music Hall constructed in 1932 with 4178 pipes. It is still played for the Radio City Christmas program and including the Rockettes. I lucked out to see their performance twice, once in 1955 and again about 25 years later. If you can get there, it is worth the entrance fee.

Until next time: Oh, Fiddlesticks!

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