Noteworthy

AVA sings, and will the Wanamaker organ play on?

by Michael Caruso
Posted 1/23/25

Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, the nation’s only post-graduate school dedicated solely to the training of professional singers, will present its annual concert “Jubilate!” Jan. 25 and 26. Subtitled “A Concert of Sacred Music,” the program features selections drawn from the centuries-long repertoire of sacred music composed for solos, ensembles and choruses. 

“Jubilate!” was the brainchild of K. James McDowell, former president and director of AVA, which is located at 1920 Spruce Street in Center City. McDowell, formerly of East …

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Noteworthy

AVA sings, and will the Wanamaker organ play on?

Posted

Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, the nation’s only post-graduate school dedicated solely to the training of professional singers, will present its annual concert “Jubilate!” Jan. 25 and 26. Subtitled “A Concert of Sacred Music,” the program features selections drawn from the centuries-long repertoire of sacred music composed for solos, ensembles and choruses. 

“Jubilate!” was the brainchild of K. James McDowell, former president and director of AVA, which is located at 1920 Spruce Street in Center City. McDowell, formerly of East Falls and now a resident of Flourtown, recognized the lack of extensive training for professional singers in the classical repertoire of sacred music that once was regularly sung in churches throughout the country but that nowadays has become more often than not overlooked.

Germantown resident Richard Raub, one of AVA’s most renowned master vocal coaches, will conduct the program’s two performances. The first will be Saturday, Jan. 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, located at 230 Pennswood Road in Bryn Mawr. The second performance is scheduled for Sunday, January 26, at 7 p.m. in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity, located on Rittenhouse Square in Center City. 

Tickets are $10 to $45. For more information call 215-735-1685 or visit avaopera.org. Next on the roster at AVA is Mozart’s sophisticated comedy, “Cosi fan tutte” (“Thus do they all”). It runs from Feb. 22 through March 1.

The Wanamaker organ

Last week, major announcements that will have long term impact on life in Philadelphia stunned city officials and residents. Seemingly “out of the blue,” the Sixers decided not to leave the South Philadelphia sports complex to build their own arena on Market Street East and, instead, to join forces with Comcast to build an arena in South Philadelphia to be shared with the Flyers.

A few days earlier, Macy’s Department Stores announced that it would be closing its Center City store in the Wanamaker Building in March. Unlike the Sixers’ bombshell, this one was not totally unexpected. Large, legacy department stores have been struggling for several decades, and the Covid lockdown was truly the death knell for many. 

The question here for music lovers in general and lovers of pipe organs in particular is this: What’s going to happen to the pipe organ that graces the building’s Grand Court?

Although the organ at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Convention Hall is technically larger, most of it isn’t functional. The Wanamaker organ boasts 464 ranks, nearly 29,000 pipes, and six manuals (keyboards). Under the guidance of principal organist Peter Richard Conte, director of music at St. Clement’s Episcopal/Anglo-Catholic Church, the instrument is virtually fully functional for perhaps the first time since it was installed in 1911.

Mark Bani, a former student of Richard Alexander at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill and the music director at Old St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Society Hill, is one of the assistant organists at the Wanamaker. He explained to me that “I first began playing the Wanamaker organ while I was a student at the Curtis Institute of Music in the 1980s. Keith Chapman, then the head organist at Wanamaker’s, had invited me to join the roster of assistant organists. I had studied with Richard Alexander at St. Paul’s Church on its magnificent Aeolian-Skinner organ and was well trained to utilize the limitless orchestral resources of the Wanamaker organ.”

Bani, who received his graduate and doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School in New York City, continued, “When Peter Conte, the current head organist at the Wanamaker, invited me to rejoin the roster eight years ago, I was impressed to see the many improvements made to the instrument during the past 30 years, including the restoration of the combination action, enabling the organist to preset the myriad of tonal possibilities of that great organ, making it a one-of-a-kind instrument.

Bani describes playing the Wanamaker organ as an honor, one that he basks in every Friday at noon and “I pray that this outreach to lovers of music will continue for years to come,” he said.

During the Christmas season in the 1950s, I first heard the Wanamaker organ as a kid, not only listening to its orchestral splendor but seeing the store’s famous Christmas Pageant as well. Leading the family troupe of siblings and cousins was my Great-Great Aunt Catherine, who lived to be 106 years old and was the granddaughter of my first relative who had come over from Naples, Italy, in the 1850s. I’m sure that many Philadelphians have similar family connections to the Wanamaker store and its organ that are equally as strong as mine. Like Mark Bani, I, too, pray that Macy’s Center City demise isn’t shared by the Wanamaker organ.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.