07 April 2009

O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden

Palm Sunday's service was the most beautiful I've played at St. Joseph. The congregation sang the final hymn, which Bach used for the St Matthew Passion, in harmony, and that hymn moves me more than any other. I don't often think of myself as a church organist, but if every service were like that, I wouldn't mind it at all.

There is an interesting carillon event coming up:

CARILLON 2009
A Special Program including Lou Reed’s “A Perfect Day”
The Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue (at 120th Street), New York City
April 30, 2009 at 11:30am-12:30pm

The Riverside Church carillon is the largest in the world and made partly by Dutch craftsmen. On Koninginnedag, it will be called into service by the Dutch mastercarillonneur Sjoerd Tamminga, who has played “A Perfect Day” by Lou Reed for the past ten years in at the Maria Magdelena Church in Goes. This will be the finale to a series of carillon performances beginning in the Netherlands earlier in the day and ending at The Riverside Church at noon, where Lou Reed will be in attendance.


It reminds me of Doug Henderson's bell installation, Requiem for a Penny (2005). They both seem to imagine a worldwide synchronicity and sounding of bells for a "third listener" up in space.

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