Allen Organ Concert
We hope you enjoy these outstanding videos highlighting our very own Gary Sponholtz performing at DVC. Thanks for doing this, your contributions to Peace are extraordinary!
These links will take you from the Peace website, come again…
- L’Inglesina https://vimeo.com/88634239
- Thais’ Meditation https://vimeo.com/88633492
- Fugue in G minor https://vimeo.com/88632764
- Maple Leaf Rag https://vimeo.com/88632242
- Schwanda, the Bagpiper https://vimeo.com/88631583
- Fanfare for the common man https://vimeo.com/88629932
- Suite Francaise https://vimeo.com/88629288
- The Planets, https://vimeo.com/88627224
- Lonely Beach https://vimeo.com/88626289
- Hail! California https://vimeo.com/88556454
Flickr fotos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/garyinrv/sets
/72157642154716624/
For History Buffs…
A tale of a Lost Organ
Close to 100 years ago at the 1915 San Francisco’s World’s Fair, a 300 voice chorus sang Hail, California supported by an orchestra, John Sousa’s Band, and a massive pipe organ, the sound and percussion carrying throughout the exposition. Over 100,000 San Franciscans attended the Fair on opening day and at the end of the 10-month run, the fair closed and bulldozers began their demolition.
So what happened to the organ?
Currently a multi-million dollar civic treasure, the organ sits downstairs behind locked doors in the old Brooks Hall beneath the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza. This 40 foot tall and 40 foot wide pipe organ resides deep within a room filled with the unused, the unread, and un-researched, tucked away in the deepest corner, unheard.
Want to learn more…
Ask Gary about the Friends of the Exposition Organ, a group who would like to see it and hear it live someday. According to Michael Evje, an organ aficionado, “the tallest pipe is 37-feet long and weighs 700 pounds.” It is one large pipe among 10,000 of them, 40 tons of organ strewn around the floor. It is a piece of local music history, unclaimed by any city department, cloaked in dust and darkness. The last time the organ played in public in San Francisco, it was 1989 just before the Loma Prieta earthquake.
As long as it remains underground, it will play nothing at all…
This webpage material was extracted from two sources: