John Winthrop proclaimed it “The City on the Hill,” Oliver Wendell preferred “The Hub”, while the folks at Fenway Park like “Beantown” best. But organists know Boston as a musical Mecca: the backyard of Hook, Hastings and Hutchings, home turf for Ernest Skinner and G. Donald Harrison, the site of Charles Fisk’s early great works. While Boston may have been a detour for Lynwood Farnam and Ernest Mitchell, it remained the long-time home for Lowell Mason, Archibald “Doc” Davison, and E. Power Biggs.
Today the legacy continues. Choral, orchestral, opera and early music communities thrive out of all proportion to the area’s population. New and restored instruments abound, from Aeolian-Skinner, Fisk, Juget-Sinclair and Hook to Richards Fowkes, Schoenstein and, of course, Skinner. In turn, these organs occupy some of America’s finest buildings—from the exuberant Victorianism of John Sturgis’s Church of the Advent and Willard Sears’ “New” Old South Church, to the restrained neo-Classicism of Charles McKim’s Symphony Hall and Henry Vaughan’s Music Hall at Methuen, or the one-of-a-kind genius of H.H. Richardson’s Trinity Church.
Past, present and future: come join with us to experience the Boston of 2014.