ALLEN ORGAN INSTALLATIONS

Henderson Highway Seventh-Day Adventist Church
Winnipeg, Manitoba

New Organ Arrives!
By Dr. Rex Sokolies

What a moment it was to see the new Allen digital organ arrive at Henderson Highway! The old organ and speakers were carefully removed and the new instrument and its four new speaker cabinets were installed. It was realized after the fact that the new organ went in on the 320th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (born 1685), arguably the greatest and most important composer of church organ music and a major contributor to church music in general.

Under the careful ear of Ken Doerksen, the local Allen dealer, our new organ underwent some voicing the next day. This involved listening to each of the organ registers (or stops) and making some adjustments to the tone and volume to keep everything balanced and musical. The organ specifications are based on centuries of traditions in church music and pipe organ building. The result is a very satisfying and beautiful sound with a tremendous variety of tone. The new organ has three manuals (or keyboards) and one pedal division. It has 39 stops sampled from actual organ pipes. There are 12 different flute sounds, 9 principals, 4 mixtures, 4 reeds, etc., all with a variety of interesting names like Krummhorn, Bourdon, Lieblichgedackt, Spitzflöte and Diapason.

The new organ includes an Allen Expander™ module with additional voices: 94 classic organ sound samples, 128 general MIDI sounds, 21 orchestral instrument samples. These additional sounds are playable from the organ using MIDI technology.

It has been exciting to see how the church membership has embraced this project. Thanks to all for their donations and special thanks to our children who collected the Lambs' Offering each week.

May God be glorified in our music!

Dr. Rex Sokolies

Henderson Highway Seventh-Day Adventist Church