The Final Touch

The custom Helzberg Hall organ is ready for its debut.

James David Christie, organ consultant for more than four years with the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, has been given the honor to play the 5,548-pipe Casavant Frères organ that graces Helzberg Hall. The concerts March 10 and 11 are sold out. Christie says the honor is humbling.

“From the design stage to the installation and voicing, it has been a pleasure to help consult,” he says. “Helzberg Hall is an exceptional and premiere facility. Julia Irene Kauffman knew what she wanted and part of her legacy would be this incredible concert hall. However, the consultant doesn’t always get the first chance to play the new organ. I am very moved to be asked.” Christie has helped dedicate organs in Italy, Wisconsin, and Washington State this performance season. He has been the organist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1978. He has performed premiers of more than 40 works. He has performed and recorded with symphony orchestras around the world including major orchestras in London, Stuttgart, Vienna, Koblentz, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Baltimore.

Christie has traveled the world as a guest artist. He has played organs in some of Europe’s finest concert halls and churches, but he says the Casavant here is one of the finest instruments he has had the privilege to play. “Every stop is the heart and soul into the organ. The pipes dance above the stage. It is a visually appealing instrument as well. The engineering will be appreciated by many.”

Christie calls the Casavant a versatile instrument that is voiced to provide a lavish sound. He says the organ is one of the best in the nation and ranks with the Disney Concert Hall organ. The organ is a mechanical action and definitely geared for symphonic playing. The 5,548-pipe Casavant Frères organ, custom designed for the hall, works on a mechanical action that requires players to have beautifully trained fingers, Christie says. It’s after the French romantic tradition and has 79 stops and 102 ranks. “Most of the great organs of Europe are mechanical action,” he says. Casavant Frères Organ Builders is a 125-year-old company headquartered near Montreal, Canada.

Anyone who has seen Disney’s Fantasia will know one of the leading organ pieces, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and Christie plans to end the first half of the program with the piece. “It’s really a favorite piece for any organ dedication. It’s just dazzling. The second half of the concert will feature French Romantic music. I also will play my own work Elegie in memoriam to Jean Langlais, the blind organist who I studied with for a time.” He plans to end the concert with another French composer, Alexandre Guilmant.

Christie says future concerts will be enhanced because of the organ. He suspects audiences will be excited for the mid-June concerts of Saint-Saën’s Symphony No. 3, “Organ Symphony.” Organist Paul Jacobs will play for the concert. Even in the 2012-2013 concert season, the Kansas City Symphony has already programmed organist Caroline Robinson to come in early April 2012 to play Poulenc’s Concerto in G Minor for Organ, Strings and Timpani.

In 1979, he became the first American to win the International Organ Competition in Bruges, Belgium, and the first competitor to win both first prize and prize of the audience. “I was young, 26, and fresh off this win and my first professional performance came at the now Community of Christ auditorium in Independence. I have never forgotten that concert. Kansas City holds a soft spot in my heart.” For many budding organists and even many professionals, Dr. John Obetz, the principal organist for Community of Christ from 1967 to 1998, also spearheaded a weekly radio show for more than 25 years. Christie was honored to be invited to the same auditorium as Obetz.

Christie also holds positions as the Distinguished Artist in Residence at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass., and Chair and Professor of Organ at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio. “My greatest joy is to teach the finest organ students. They will take up the responsibilities of playing these beautiful instruments.”

Christie says he hopes the organ will be shared often. The Greater Kansas City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists has been around since 1938 and has more than 260 members. “I really think the excitement will continue,” he says.

While many think of organ music as an exclusive church creation, Christie says he wants audiences to look beyond the dirge-like qualities and seek out performances. “The concert experience in Helzberg Hall will be one of power. There will be loud and soft sounds. There will be changes in color. I counted about 140 changes of color in just the first half of the program. It’s not a dirge-like program. I know that a modern listener needs to be engaged. This organ can do just that.”