The king of instruments

With roughly 50 members throughout Northeast Wisconsin, NEWAGO (the Northeast Wisconsin chapter of the American Guild of Organists) is working hard to keep the art of the organ alive through weekly concert series and educational programming.

“The American Guild of Organists is a national organization that is dedicated to advocacy for organ music, church music, supporting organists and those types of things…” Kopp said. “In recent years, you’ve had a lot of changes and a lot of choices for people in terms of what they want to do with their leisure time. Church attendance is not what it once was and there are lots of different choices for congregations to provide music and worship. There’s a lot more variety out there in terms of music, but we feel that the organ is still an important piece of that mix and we definitely want to make sure that we have people that can play the instruments because they are quite amazing.”

And what makes the organ such an amazing instrument? Kopp said it really comes down to the instrument’s versatility.

“It’s called the king of instruments,” Kopp said. “You can create an incredibly large sound with it and you can create an incredibly small sound. It has an incredible range of musicianship that you can bring to it and it’s incredibly fun to play.”

Although the organ shares some similarities with the piano, Kopp said actually playing the instruments are two vastly different experiences, although many organists start out as pianists.

“I studied piano growing up and through high school and I studied piano at the college level, but I didn’t get into organ until much later,” he said. “I was in my mid- to late-twenties when I started getting into it. An organist I knew at the church we were attending at the time encouraged me to go and check it out and start to take some lessons so I did that and I kind of got hooked on it and I haven’t stopped playing it since… It’s very different from playing the piano. Most organists start out as piano students and when you make that transition from piano to organ and you try playing an organ for the first time, it’s really quite a humbling experience and an exciting one, too. It’s a lot more difficult and just different and there’s so many more things that you can do with a larger pipe organ.”

Hoping to spark that same interest in the organ that he and other members of NEWAGO have found, the organization offers educational opportunities for piano students to give the organ a try.

“We have a thing called Pedals, Pipes and Pizza where we invite piano students that are elementary age up into high school to a church where we have a pipe organ demonstration and an opportunity for them to play the instrument,” Kopp said. “They can bring whatever piano piece they’ve been working on and we’ll have someone help them get that set up to be able to play it on an organ because it’s a lot different. It’s a nice event for them to get some exposure to the organ and hopefully for them to want to continue on.”

And for individuals of all ages with an interest in learning to play the organ, NEWAGO has scholarship opportunities available.

“We are looking for people to apply to take lessons through our scholarship program,” Kopp said. “We have an opportunity for people of all ages. It doesn’t have to be young students, it can really be anyone that would have an interest in learning how to play the organ. We have a process where people can apply for a scholarship and receive a year’s worth of organ lessons at no cost. We will help people find a place with an instrument to practice on if they don’t have a home congregation [with an organ] and we have instructors that are members of our organization that would provide those lessons. That’s something we do that we’d love to have lots more students for. We think it’s just very important to make sure that we continue to prepare people to be ready to play in congregations and to play for worship services and keep the art of playing the organ alive.”

Also helping to keep the art of the organ alive are NEWAGO’s concert programs which take place throughout the summer — the Lunchtime Organ Recital series in Appleton and the Power of Pipes series in Green Bay.

Since 2016, the Power of Pipes concert series has offered community members an opportunity to come out to a different church each Tuesday night throughout the summer to hear a variety of music played on a variety of organs.

“What’s nice about it is that it gives people a chance to get out and see other churches… and hear different organists than the one they might have at their congregation,” Kopp said. “They hear a little bit of some different styles and some different takes… Some of our concerts have themes, so that’s kind of fun to hear a specific type of music on the organ that you’d maybe not hear on a Sunday morning.

We’ve had movie track music, we had a Star Wars-themed concert one year, I did a baseball program a couple weeks back. We try to mix it up a little bit and continue to have interest in what we’re doing.”

And NEWAGO has gained quite an interest in their Power of Pipes concerts over the years, with many people attending multiple or all of the concerts in the series.

“Every year we see some feedback of people that attend of, ‘Oh, I didn’t even know we had these in Green Bay,’ so once they’ve learned that they’re here, we see a lot of repeat attendees at the concerts because this is something they’re interested in checking out on a more regular basis,” Kopp said. “What we’re doing is a very accessible way for people to come and get a little bit of exposure to [organ music] and we do have a lot of people that come to pretty much every single one.”

As an organist himself, Kopp said seeing that type of response to the Power of Pipes concert series is encouraging.

“It’s just fun to provide a good experience for people…” he said. “It’s really fun to see, as an organist, that we’re reaching people and people are interested.”

There are two concerts left in this summer’s Power of Pipes series — Aug. 19 at Ascension Lutheran Church in Allouez and Aug. 26 at First Presbyterian Church in Green Bay.

All Power of Pipes concerts begin at 6:30 p.m. and are free to attend.

Learn more about NEWAGO and its programming at newago.org.