Seattle’s Pride

It’s organ and orchestra on our next Pipedreams program, from the inaugural week’s concerts at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall where the Watjen Concert Organ, built by C.B. Fisk, made its debut with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle symphony during the Millennial Year National Convention of the American Guild of Organists. Hatsumi Miura premiere’s Robert Sirota’s new piece, In the Fullness of Time, resident curator Carole Terry performs Aaron Copland’s path-breaking Symphony Number 1, and Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet-Hakim introduces the vibrant Seattle Concerto by her husband, Naji Hakim. The crowds at Benaroya Hall went wild, and you will, too, as we share in Seattle’s Pride, America’s newest concert organ, this week on Pipedreams.

There’s unrepentant optimism in the new Seattle Concerto by Naji Hakim, and a world of expressive possibility in music by Copland and Robert Sirota featuring the potent Watjen Concert Organ recently inaugurated at Benaroya Hall by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony. It’s Seattle’s Pride this week on Pipedreams.

Listen to the program

Program Broadcast dates:

•February 19, 2001 as Show #0108

•September 2, 2002 as Show #0236

Featured Organ:

2000 C.B. Fisk/S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium in Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA is Opus 114 of C.B. Fisk Organbuilders of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Te instrument is the second major concert-hall installation by this renowned firm and the first of their instruments in the Pacific Northwest. It was inaugurated in the same week as this concert was performed. The two new works premiered on this occasion were commissioned by AGO Seattle 2000, the American Guild of Organists’ Biennial National Convention Committee.

Music played in the program

ROBERT SIROTA: In the fullness of time [1999], premiere –Hatsumi Miura

AARON COPLAND: Organ Symphony [1925] –Carole Terry

NAJI HAKIM: Seattle Concerto [1998], premiere –Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet Hakim, organ; recorded July 6, 2000