The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings, and a masterpiece of 20th-century architecture.
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre, volume, and construction throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have many ranks of pipes of differing pitch, timbre, and volume that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, California, is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center and was designed by Frank Gehry. It was opened on October 23, 2003. Bounded by Hope Street, Grand Avenue, and 1st and 2nd Streets, it seats 2,265 people and serves, among other purposes, as the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The hall is a compromise between a vineyard-style seating configuration, like the Berliner Philharmonie by Hans Scharoun, and a classical shoebox design like the Vienna Musikverein or the Boston Symphony Hall.
An organ stop is a component of a pipe organ that admits pressurized air to a set of organ pipes. Its name comes from the fact that stops can be used selectively by the organist; each can be "on", or "off".
Melbourne Town Hall, often referred to as simply Town Hall, is the administrative seat of the local municipality of the City of Melbourne and the primary offices of the Lord Mayor and city councillors of Melbourne. Located on the northeast corner of Swanston and Collins street in the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the building was completed in 1887 and heritage listed on the Victorian Heritage Register in 1974. The building is frequently used for art and cultural events such as concerts, festivals, theatrical plays and exhibitions.
Casavant Frères is a Canadian organ building company in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, which has been building pipe organs since 1879. As of 2014, the company has produced more than 3,900 organs.
Mathias Peter Møller, commonly known as M.P. Möller or Moeller, was a prolific pipe-organ builder and businessman. A native of the Danish island of Bornholm, he emigrated to the United States in 1872 and founded the M.P. Moller Pipe Organ Company in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, in 1875. The city of Hagerstown, Maryland, took notice of Möller's early successes and induced him to move his business there in 1881 to help make it a viable business center in Western Maryland. The company remained in business in Hagerstown until 1992, with hundreds of employees at its peak and a lifetime production of over 12,000 instruments.
Ronald William Sharp was an Australian organ builder. He was awarded the Silver Jubilee Medal (1977) and the British Empire Medal (1980).
Tracker action is a term used in reference to pipe organs and steam calliopes to indicate a mechanical linkage between keys or pedals pressed by the organist and the valve that allows air to flow into pipe(s) of the corresponding note. This is in contrast to "direct electric action" and "electro-pneumatic action", which connect the key to the valve through an electrical link or an electrically assisted pneumatic system respectively, or "tubular-pneumatic action" which utilizes a change of pressure within lead tubing which connects the key to the valve pneumatic.
The electro-pneumatic action is a control system by the mean of air pressure for pipe organs, whereby air pressure, controlled by an electric current and operated by the keys of an organ console, opens and closes valves within wind chests, allowing the pipes to speak. This system also allows the console to be physically detached from the organ itself. The only connection was via an electrical cable from the console to the relay, with some early organ consoles utilizing a separate wind supply to operate combination pistons.
The Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ, also known as the Midmer-Losh and the Poseidon, is the pipe organ in the Main Auditorium of the landmark Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The musically versatile instrument was built by the Midmer-Losh Organ Company during 1929–1932. It is the largest organ in the world, as measured by the number of pipes – officially 33,112, but the exact number is uncertain. After decades of accumulated damage from water, building renovations, neglect, and insufficient funding, now a multi-million-dollar restoration program is gradually returning the organ to full operability.
The Great Hall of the University of Sydney, is one of the principal structures of The University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, with a public interior used for formal ceremonies, conferences, recitals and dinners. The Hall, located in the Main Quadrangle on the Camperdown campus, is a symbol of the university's stately history and an excellent example of Victorian Academic Gothic revival architecture. Completed in July 1859, the Great Hall soon became a tourist attraction; the writer Anthony Trollope wrote home in 1874 that the Hall was "the finest chamber in the colonies", and that no college of Oxford or Cambridge possessed a hall "of which the proportions are so good".
St George's Cathedral is the principal Anglican church in the city of Perth, Western Australia, and the mother-church of the Anglican Diocese of Perth. It is located on St Georges Terrace in the centre of the city.
The Curtis Organ, named for publisher Cyrus H.K. Curtis, is one of the largest pipe organs in the world with 162 ranks and 10,731 pipes. The concert organ, of American Symphonic design, was manufactured by the Austin Organ Company as its Opus 1416 in 1926 for the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition. It was known as the "Organists' Organ" because the specifications were formulated by Henry S. Fry, John M'E. Ward, Rollo F. Maitland, Frederick Maxson, and S. Wesley Sears, all prominent Philadelphia organists.
The Salt Lake Tabernacle organ is a pipe organ located in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah. Along with the nearby Conference Center organ, it is typically used to accompany the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square and is also featured in daily noon recitals. It is one of the largest organs in the world. Jack Bethards, president and tonal director of Schoenstein & Co., describes it as an "American classic organ" and "probably one of the most perfect organs ever built."
The Sydney Town Hall Grand Organ is the world's largest pipe organ that uses mechanical tracker action, built by English firm William Hill & Son in 1890. It is located in the Centennial Hall of Sydney Town Hall in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Registration is the technique of choosing and combining the stops of a pipe organ in order to produce a particular sound. Registration can also refer to a particular combination of stops, which may be recalled through combination action. The registration chosen for a particular piece will be determined by a number of factors, including the composer's indications, the time and place in which the piece was composed, the organ the piece is played upon, and the acoustic environment within which the organ resides.
The Schoenstein Organ at the Conference Center is a pipe organ built by Schoenstein & Co., San Francisco, California located in the Conference Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. The organ was completed in 2003. It is composed of 160 speaking stops spread over five manuals and pedals. Along with the nearby Salt Lake Tabernacle organ, it is typically used to accompany the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. Schoenstein & Co.'s president and tonal director, Jack Bethards, describes it as "an American Romantic organ" that is "probably more English than anything else."
Casavant Frères Ltée. Opus 1841 is a pipe organ built by the famous Casavant Frères of Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec. The organ was first completed in 1911 as Casavant Brothers - Opus 452 for St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church at 40 Bentinck Street, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. St. Andrew's later became St. Andrew's United Church and is now the Highland Arts Theatre.
