All Saints Episcopal Church, Bay Head, New Jersey, sponsored a concert and reception on May 17 to mark the 50th anniversary of the church’s 1974 Casavant Frères, Limitée, Op. 3214. Organist Michael J. Diorio, conductor Mark Trautman, and ten instrumentalists from the All Saints Chamber Orchestra performed works by Bach, Guilmant, Lefebvre, Krebs, Mozart, and Reincken to a capacity audience.
The Casavant organ was acquired through the efforts of Lee Hastings Bristol, Jr., organist and choirmaster at All Saints from 1940 until 1977. Bristol was a musician, executive with Bristol-Meyers, and president of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. The organ was first played on Easter Sunday, 1974, and during the following summer was heard in recitals by Joan Lippincott, Eugene Roan, and Bristol. Designed by Gerhard Brunzema, the instrument is in Werkprinzip style, with mechanical key and stop action, free-standing casework, and graduated Principal registers on the Hauptwerk, Positiv, and Pedal divisions. The two-manual organ is intact, despite the fact that the bottom third of the instrument soaked in brackish water for several days during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Before the anniversary concert, the organ was featured in two articles on May 3 and 24 in The Ocean Star, the Point Pleasant, New Jersey, newspaper. Four of Bristol’s children sponsored the reception, which boasted a two-by-three-foot sheet cake with a detailed image of the church on the top. A toast, offered by Hank Bristol, charged the congregation with the responsibility to properly care for the organ until its centennial in 2074.
For information: allsaintsbayhead.org.
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