Looking to Christmas and the New Year

The holidays will soon be upon us, and on behalf of all my colleagues at ChurchOrganWorld I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

Many Makin customers have been taken by the great flexibility of our Thirlmere 2-30 tabstop instrument and following numerous requests, the production of this instrument as a drawstop organ became a reality which visitors to both Shaw and Mixbury showrooms can now play. Customers have the same excellent sound in two very different consoles.

Our installations list continues to grow at pace with custom installations all over the country from Jesmond Parish Church in the North East, All Saints Church, Moulton in East Anglia, St Andrew’s Church, Oxshott in Surrey to St Bees School in Cumbria with many more in between!

There were several major Copeman Hart installations through the year including a 2-31 in the church of St Margaret of Antioch in Reydon, a 3-51 in Wycliffe College, Stonehouse and a 4-61 in the church of St Bartholomew in Long Benton. You can find details of these installations and many others on the installation section of the Copeman Hart website. Installations for 2015 are already lining up nicely.

Following on from recent releases of home practice instruments in the Studio, Opus and Vivaldi ranges, Johannus has recently launched a range of 3, 4 and 5 manual Monarke custom instruments in stunning consoles, the build quality of which is second to none. This year an organ was installed in the brand-new, multi-purpose, Philippine Arena near Manila in the Philippines. With a seating capacity of 55,000, it is the largest covered arena ever built! The three manual Monarke organ has 64 speaking stops, dozens of amplifiers and hundreds of speakers. On a personal basis, it was a delight to provide and install a Johannus Symphonica home practice organ for Pete Townshend of the legendary rock band, ‘The Who’. In addition to a more classical repertoire, Pete will be using this whilst writing ‘Floss’, an ambitious new music project.

All Custom Makin and Copeman Hart instruments are voiced (tonally finished) on site using the ‘ears’ and formidable first-hand knowledge and experience of organ sound of Professor Ian Tracey, along with the computer talents of either Richard Goodall or myself. Our approach has delighted customers and indeed we have gone back over several older installations, weaved our magic, and produced an even better instrument for them. On occasions we are asked to work with other voicers, and we are happy to do so if required, but I can confidently say that our ‘home team’ produce simply the best digital voicing money can buy.

Our newspaper, Organ News 24 will be out in early 2015. In the meantime, the latest information can be found in our digital presence, which now goes beyond our website  and extends to our Facebook group www.facebook.com/churchorganworld.

Our offices close for business on Tuesday 23rd December, opening again on Monday 5th January. During that time, in case of emergency, please call 01706 888 100.

With best wishes for 2015.

Sincerely,

Dr Keith A Harrington
Managing Director