Community
BY RACHEL LELAND
Garmon Ashby, music director at St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church, holds one of the organ’s many pipes.
N
18300 Upper Bay Rd., Houston www.sttaec.org
JohnPaul Chauvin, an organ performance student at University of Houston, sits at the pipe organ console.
PHOTOS BY RACHEL LELAND COMMUNITY IMPACT
Nassau Bay church looks to restore 90-year-old historic pipe organ From the hands of a U.S. senator to an Episcopal church in Nassau Bay, a 90-year-old pipe organ still has generations of hymnals ahead of it, and church leaders have a plan to help it play on. To do this, St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church is looking to raise $250,000 to both restore and install the historic pipe organ.
1933 to be installed in his Denver mansion. Follow- ing Phipps’s death, the organ passed through many owners before St. Thomas acquired it. Giving back JohnPaul Chauvin, a University of Houston freshman organ performance student, regularly plays traditional music on the church’s digital organ, but looks forward to playing on the Opus 7133. “Whenever we have real pipes in the organ, we can have real wind owing through them, and it gives a natural sound, and so it better emulates the human voice,” Chauvin said. “It makes everything more meshed together, and it helps us worship God more ... genuinely.”
The full story In 2016, St. Thomas was gifted the Kimball Opus 7133 from a private collector, St. Thomas Music Director Garmon Ashby said. The Opus 7133 is of considerable size, and has three manuals and pedals, with 41 stops, 52 ranks and a total of 3,556 individual pipes, according to the church’s website. Put in perspective The Opus 7133 has a storied past and has changed many hands, Ashby said. As a gift to his wife, former Colorado U.S. Sen. Lawrence Phipps commissioned the Opus 7133 in
The Plumeria Society of America invites you to join us for Important Early-Season Plumeria Growing Tips
March 10, 2024 2:00pm – 4:30pm Bay Area Community Center 5002 East Nasa Parkway, Seabrook, TX 77586 Located in: Clear Lake Park
you need to know about your community in 5 MINUTES
Join us for Keynote Speaker Andy Chidester, Educational Seminars, a Mix and Mingle and Raffle!
Sign up to receive the
Morning Impact to your inbox. COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM�NEWSLETTER
18
COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM
Powered by FlippingBook