The fourth Evening Improvisation attempts to use the organ as a percussion instrument. This sort of thing has been done before, but one distinct advantage to this improvisation is the organ itself. All organs may have similar aspects while still being unique to their space and builder. To be totally honest, the instrument at the Monastery is not great. It’s a mediocre 1980 Moller with some nice colors and everything chiffs. No kidding, even the celeste chiffs. Then why not use it for something! The chiffing combined with the slow speak of the lowest register pipes creates something that I think sounds like a musical saw, only much richer (and less silly?).
A small note about the improv: the clicking you hear is my wedding ring hitting the keys. I was really digging in!
[…] particular improvisation should be reminiscent of an earlier improvisation where I treated the organ as a percussion instrument. The Fisk/Rosales organ at Rice is a tracker which allows for a different sort of treatment in […]
[…] loud, a bit obnoxious, and was totally fun to play. It has some elements similar to the earlier cluster-percussion improvisation, but from a different angle. Specifically, there is a nearly continuous tremolo cluster in the […]