[Baltimore Sun] Bach in Baltimore to open 37th season with Cockeysville church’s $1.2M pipe organ
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Bach in Baltimore, is, well, back.
Baltimore’s Baroque music specialist will launch its 37th season Sunday by featuring a $1.2 million, custom-built, 2,200-pipe organ making its debut at St. Joseph Parish in Cockeysville.
Technically, this isn’t the new organ’s first public performance; the congregation was invited to an inaugural recital on Sept. 8. But this weekend will be the first time that the musical instrument is really put through its paces and asked to demonstrate its power and range.
The Bach in Baltimore Concert Choir & Orchestra will present Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, (commonly known as the “Eroica”) and the 19th-century French composer Alexandre Guilmant’s Symphony No. 1, which blends orchestral textures with virtuosic organ passages.
The program will be conducted by Bach in Baltimore’s founder and music director, T. Herbert Dimmock, and will feature soloist Lynn Trapp on the organ.
“It’s going to be a sonic extravaganza,” Dimmock said. “I think audiences will love it. The sound is so powerful it will just lift people out of their seats.”
The organ is part of an $8 million yearlong renovation of the historic church, which was built in the 1800s from stone mined at the former Beaver Dam quarry — the same source for the white marble used to build the Washington Monument.
Part of the church’s renovation included widening and adding height to the worship space and making dramatic enhancements to the church’s acoustics. Trapp, St. Joseph’s director of liturgy and music, said the sound system is designed to project evenly across the church’s 750 seats.
‘The acoustics are excellent,” Dimmock said. “They aren’t echo-y the way some buildings are. The sound rings in the air. It’s very present, very immediate and very rich.”
Sunday’s concert is a joint effort by two treasured community assets — the church, and the nonprofit music group. Bach in Baltimore consists of about 50 singers and a 30-member orchestra that Dimmock says includes “spectacular players, the créme de la créme of the freelance world” supplemented by guest musicians and soloists.
The concert and orchestra performs its subscription series of a baker’s dozen of concerts annually in churches and auditoriums throughout the Baltimore metropolitan area.
“I love the music,” Dimmock said. “I believe in the music. And I believe in taking it not just to Baltimore, but to audiences in Howard and Harford counties.”
The group’s repertoire consists of the works of the 18th-century composer J.S. Bach and such contemporaries as Georg Philipp Telemann, Tomaso Albinoni, Antonio Vivaldi and more.
“I’m committed to performing everything Bach wrote and that’s a big commitment,” Dimmock said. “In the past three dozen years, we’ve done 165 of the 210 cantatas and all of the major choral pieces. Some of this stuff is performed so rarely that prior to the internet, you couldn’t even get the music.”
The subscription series is supplemented with another dozen free performances of small ensembles at regional nursing homes.
“This generation has a deep love of classical music,” Dimmock said. “But a lot of people living in retirement communities have mobility issues and can’t get out. We ask the community to support us, so we try to give back to the community.”
He’s proud that on a $340,000 annual budget, Bach in Baltimore has launched three major community initiatives: the nursing home program, a youth program in which the orchestra and choir team up with school groups to perform public concerts, and a program for emerging artists which helps young musicians leaving graduate school launch professional careers.
“I introduced one of my singers in the program, a soprano, to an agent in New York,” Dimmock said. “She signed with him, and he loves her.”
Bach in Baltimore will perform Sunday alongside the Remington pipe organ, which was constructed to the specifications of St. Joseph Parish from its musical colors to the console layout. Trapp said that project has been in the works since before the 2020 pandemic.
The organ is divided into 40 ranks, or sets of about 55 pipes, that all produce the same timbre. Some of the pipes are vintage, and were created by some of the nation’s great organ makers of the past, while others are new. The Remington will take its place alongside the church’s other instruments, which include a new Steinway piano.
“This organ is a vineyard of some of America’s great organ builders,” Trapp said.
But despite the money and time that went into developing the organ’s voice, Trapp didn’t know how it was going to sound until he heard it for the first time.
He compared building an organ to Michelangelo discovering the sculpture hidden inside a block of Carrara marble.
“It is a handmade work of art,” he said. “No matter how much planning and chiseling you do, you have to wait to see what voice is going to come out of the organ.”
When Trapp ran his fingers across the keyboard for the first time and heard the organ sing, the sound that came out justified five years of uncertainty and hard work.
“This one has a voice that is very lush and romantic,” he said. “I can’t wait for people to hear it.”
If You Go
Bach in Baltimore will perform “Beethoven and Guilmant” at 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Joseph Parish, 100 Church Lane, Cockeysville. Tickets cost $44 and can be bought by visiting bachinbaltimore.org or, for larger groups, by calling 410-941-9262.
Have a news tip? Contact Mary Carole McCauley at mmccauley@baltsun.com, 410-332-6704 and x.com/@mcmccauley.
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