The Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew

Letter from the Organ Fund Committee

5/27/2026

Dear Parishioners,

You can go many places and hear many kinds of music; if you’re lucky, you might even get to hear it performed live. But only in very special places around the world, like our own sanctuary, do we get to bask in the unmatched presence of the pipe organ. The music of our choir and organ enlivens and enriches our spiritual life at Saints James and Andrew. It provides a special pathway to divine majesty and God’s presence in our lives.

As you have likely heard, we will worship in the Whiteman Room for much of the summer, far away from our beloved organ. However, because the organ must be partially disassembled to make room for the ceiling repairs, we have a perfect opportunity to maintain and improve this delicate and complicated instrument. Walker Pipe Organs, led by our own Peter Walker, have proposed a bevy of essential repairs and upgrades at reasonable prices; Vestry have accepted the proposal; we’d like to invite you to learn how you can secure the organ for the coming decades.

For those who aren’t as familiar with pipe organs: each pipe in a pipe organ plays only a single note. Some pipes play the same notes with different timbres, or textures. (Think of how a clarinet and a trumpet might play the same note with different sounds.) The art of the organist lies not only in playing music on the foot-pedals and keyboards, but also in choosing which groups of pipes (called ‘stops’) will sound for each note—often changing them mid-performance.

All this is possible through the central nervous system of the organ, called the ‘combination action.’ Ours dates from 1959; its delicate wind-powered complexity has, over time, become a great burden. Its fine leather pads require regular replacement, its wind-powered portions require the console (where the organist sits) to remain fixed in place, the mechanism’s ‘memory’ often requires multiple presses to activate or fails entirely, and the system has required constant repairs for the last decade. These issues are only the first among the organ’s weaknesses and deferred maintenance.

Vestry has accepted a proposal to bring our organ into 21st-century reliability without diminishing the sound we cherish and rely upon. A new computerized combination action with no moving parts would increase reliability, reduce maintenance costs, and enable each performer to draw more musicality from the same pipes. Reconstructed key contacts would ensure each note sounds exactly when the organist plays it. A rebuilt pedalboard will prevent accidental note-presses due to worn-down wood and aging springs. The new combination action would also allow the console to move around the choir loft; the choir could then stand directly with each other, blend their voices more easily, and follow conducting more clearly. And new leather pads on some wind-chests would secure our largest organ pipes and bring one long-dormant pipe back to life.

These improvements amount to $34,750 in parts and labor, alongside up to $6,000 in additional construction costs. This price isn’t simply a number—it is a story, a record of opportunities for an essential fixture of our spiritual life. Thus far, we have been playing catch-up with an aging technology we can no longer rely upon; we want to ensure our instrument’s sustainability for coming generations. So, we encourage you to prayerfully consider how the organ shapes our life in Christ together, and make a contribution to secure the future of the organ at Saints James and Andrew. In that spirit, please share your support by check or by tithe.ly with ‘Organ Fund’ in the memo line.

Warmly,
the Organ Fundraising Committee
(Karen Greene, Jeanne Canteen, and alyssa kai)

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