This is St. James Episcopal Church.
Maybe you recognize it from a movie you've seen? (Like
Confessions of a Shopaholic?) Or a television show? (Like
Gossip Girl?)
I've actually never seen this church on screen. But I get to see it in person every Sunday... because I sing at this church!
Here's the door where I enter...
The Parish House is home to several staff offices, the Christian Education rooms, as well as the music rehearsal room.
I think the sanctuary is just beautiful!
Are you wondering how I got such a great shot? Well, I took the photo from the organ gallery. My church is celebrating their 150th anniversary this year, and they installed a new organ system as part of the celebration. The gallery organ was installed last summer, and I think it's just magnificent!
Don't you love all those pipes? The organ console in the gallery is modest:
The stops flank both sides of the keyboard. As you can see, these stops modify the sound of the pedals.
When I was in college, I was friends with a couple organ majors. I loved watching them play- it's such an intricate instrument!
The console has two keyboards.
And this nifty set of pedals... doesn't it look like so much fun to play?
Believe it or not, the church is installing a NEW organ in the front of the sanctuary. It's HUGE in comparison to this one- and they've almost finished 'voicing' it. (Voicing is when the organ technician plays each note in each stop, making minute adjustments, to ensure that the instrument sounds perfect). We heard a little bit of it this morning- and it was majestic! I'll try to take pictures of that one someday... but for now, the gallery organ will have to do.
It's not too shabby, if I do say so myself!
I spent the day at church, recording a CD. My church is celebrating it's 150th year, and we're making a recording to commemorate the new organs.
I can't get over how far technology has come in the last few years. For example, this is all the recording engineer needed.
As you can imagine, recording in a studio would've been a lot easier. But since this recording is all about our new organs, it was necessary to record in the church. And since our church is on Madison Avenue, we had to take a lot of 'noise breaks' for things like sirens, horns, street cleaners and the like. So, I got out my camera and got to snapping! This is the alter in the chapel, just to the left of the sanctuary.
This is the area to the immediate left of the alter. I can never get enough of the hand painted ceiling... and those light fixtures are pretty different, too!
For audio reasons, we sang from the steps of the alter. See the music stand way back there? That's my conductor's!
Here's a closer look...
And even closer...
Remember when I said I liked the painted ceiling? The entire sanctuary has a similar treatment!
We laid down quite a few songs, which was really great. We'll have a couple more sessions, and then it'll take a few months to edit the recordings. (It rained all day yesterday, so the engineer will try and minimize the sound of rain on the roof, for example.)
I can't wait to hear what it all sounds like! I hope you had a great weekend and thanks for stopping by!
