Pipedreams with Michael Barone

The 1984 Ruffati at San Francisco Davies Hall

Pipedreams, website of the US public radio show, is well worth a visit, even if we can only listen to the archives, not the live programmes, outside of the USA.   Their archives contain hundreds of hours of online listening, with detailed programme notes and links galore, featuring pipe organs from all over the world. Pipedreams newsletter is worth a subscription too.

Pipedreams presenter Michael Barone will be over this side of the pond next year, for the 28th London Organ Forum next March (see Events).   Subtitled Stars and Stripes it will explore American organ culture on the new Richards Fowkes & Co organ at St George’s Hanover Square, London – which is of course a US built instrument, the first American organ to be commissioned in a London church.  St George’s  has always had strong links with the US of A – after Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, was married there, it became (and still is) quite the fashion for Anglo-American weddings to take place at the church.  (More on St George’s and the USA here)

In the meantime my pictures provide a little US razzle-dazzle to brighten a cold London February day – two splendid Ruffatis courtesy of Pipedreams extensive photo gallery.

Garden Grove Crystal Cathedral – the 1977 Ruffati organ

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