Church unveils high-tech organ
Cynthia Haberman Marlette’s work station is anything but ordinary.
Sitting on a bench that brings her eye-level with the complex console, complete with an LCD display, Internet access, and more knobs and doohickeys than most high-end computers, Haberman Marlette operates one of the most advanced and modern machines of its kind – a recently installed hybrid pipe organ in Coeur d’Alene’s First Presbyterian Church.
And to celebrate the instrument’s installation, the church will hold an organ dedication recital at 2 p.m. Sunday that is free and open to the public. Haberman Marlette, who is also the church’s organist of 10 years, will be accompanied at the recital by her ex-husband, Mark Haberman, the principal organist for the event, and their son, Joshua Haberman.
“It is complicated,” Haberman Marlette said, “but the end result is really simple – that you have beautiful music.”
The mother, father and son trio of talented organists are all degreed musicians from the community. Mark Haberman, the coordinator of worship and music ministry at Community United Methodist Church, received his master’s of music in organ performance from the University of Minnesota. Haberman Marlette, who is also a freelance musician, received her bachelor’s degree in piano and voice from Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. And Joshua Haberman, a software development engineer for Amazon.com, has been around music much of his life and even toured Europe twice while in a middle school boy’s choir. He has degrees in organ and computer science from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.
“There is a lot more to (a hybrid organ) and you have a lot more to play with,” Joshua Haberman said. “It’s kind of like a big puzzle. There is a lot of room for creativity.”
The three organists will take turns playing classical organ music, including Vierne, Reger and Franck, on the new Rodgers three-manual organ – foot pedals control various pitches – and on an accompanying piano. In addition to last month’s digital upgrade to the 1920s-era instrument, the 600-odd pipes of the original organ are still used in the 95-year-old church sanctuary.
The $76,000 high-tech upgrade, which took two Rodgers employees four days to complete, allows organists to combine the instrument’s many ranges and types of sounds, including five ranges from the pipes themselves, another 104 electronic ranges, three sets of velocity-sensitive keyboards and more than a dozen speakers in and around the pipe chest. It can even be updated via the Internet.
“It’s spectacular,” said First Presbyterian Church Rev. Mike Bullard. “It’s a very good marrying of the pipe and digital sounds.”
The hybrid organ installation was the first step in the church’s phased construction plans. Through fundraisers, donations and community events, the church is planning to build a new sanctuary near the old one.
The hybrid organ technology can be found in other places in the Northwest, including Spokane’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes, said Kent Brocklebank, the dean of the 65-member American Guild of Organists’ Spokane chapter. It is a technology that is sure to expand in churches, Brocklebank said, because the cost of building even a simple pipe organ easily can exceed $1 million.
While the drawback is that a digital organ can’t replicate the full range of pipe organ sounds, he said, “Churches at least have a good option now with a digital organ.”
And although the Coeur d’Alene recital takes place in a church, where the usual Sunday crowd “sings very exuberantly with the organ,” Haberman Marlette said, the music recital is meant for the entire community.
“It’s definitely a community event,” she said.