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Piping hot! Teen ivory-ticklers tour Brooklyn’s top organs

Piping hot! Teen ivory-ticklers tour Brooklyn’s top organs
Photo by Jason Speakman

Call it the organ trail.

A band of pipe-organ enthusiasts is passing on its passion to a new generation of pedal-pushers on an educational tour of Brooklyn’s best pipes, and its proteges say they have fully embraced the loud and proud instrument.

“I love its complexity,” said 12-year-old Emily Amos, a Bach fan from Louisiana who is in Brooklyn for Pipe Organ Encounters, a summer camp for teen organists. “I love everything insanely crazy, and the organ is by far the most complex of instruments.”

The Brooklyn chapter of the American Guild of Organists is hosting the organ extravaganza across five days this week, bussing budding pipe-dreamers from around the country across the borough for a series of church tours, classes, and concerts.

The camp kicked off on July 26, and will take the tube-loving teens to some of Brooklyn’s most vital organs — including the Austin organ at Grace Church in Brooklyn Heights and the recently-restored 80-year-old Kilgen organ at Our Lady of Refuge Church in Ditmas Park — before wrapping up on July 31.

Veteran organists once feared the ancient instrument’s appeal was running out of wind, but the fresh faces on the tour show it is here to stay, said an organ-izer.

“It’s not dying, and there are kids wanting to do this,” said Eric Birk, director of the Brooklyn branch of the American Guild of Organists, a national group that promotes the instrument and supports its players. “These are kids currently playing for mass or services — they’re already interested. This is the young generation of who’s coming up next.”

The teens begin each morning of the program with lessons taught by lauded instructors, then go on afternoon field trips throughout the borough and beyond to see the pipe organs housed in the city’s churches. Each day ends with a public concert featuring teachers or guest artists performing in one of Brooklyn’s storied sanctuaries.

The young ivory-ticklers say it is an intensive education in all things organ-ic.

“It’s really an in-depth experience,” said 16-year-old Peter Gingrich from Pennsylvania. “We saw five or six organs in the first day.”

One participant said she was hooked from the moment she set hand — and foot — on the keys.

“I remember the first time I looked at it and played it and I thought, ‘This is definitely a piano on steroids,’ ” said 17-year-old Lidiya Louder, who also hails from Pennsylvania and embraced the rancorous instrument a year ago. “It’s like marching pianos, because you’re playing it with your feet as well as your hands.”

The campers will perform their own recital on the final night of Pipe Organ Encounters at the Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church.

Brooklyn Pipe Organ Encounters Student Recital at Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church [424 E. 19th St. at Dorchester Road in Ditmas Park, (212) 870–2311, www.brooklynago.org]. July 31 at 6:30 pm. Free.

Reach reporter Allegra Hobbs at ahobbs@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260–8312.
Pipe dream: Organ enthusiasts from across the country came to Brooklyn to experience the borough’s impressive pipes.
Photo by Jason Speakman