After two years of disruption, a signature event is returning to Merrill Auditorium. Or, you could say, it’s Bach.
Portland municipal organist James Kennerley will present the Bach Birthday Bash on Tuesday, March 22, featuring the work of 18th-century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach on the city’s famed Kotzschmar Organ.
At almost 350 years old, Bach probably doesn’t mind skipping a few birthdays (his actual birthday is March 21), but the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ are eager to resume festivities after postponing the event two years ago and offering only a streaming version last year.
“I love livestreaming. It saved our craft as it did for so many industries,” Kennerley said. “But there is nothing like performing live. That’s what we do. That’s what fuels the performance”
The concert will still be recorded and made available digitally the following week. David Kirstein, president of the friends group’s board of directors, said the streaming option could be something that stays long after the pandemic. It’s not a big revenue stream, necessarily, but it is a way to build audience, especially those who might not be able to attend a live performance or who live far away.
Many of Bach’s compositions are universally known, even if not always by name, but lesser known is the fact that he was a world-class organist.
So, too, is Kennerley, who was installed in 2018 as Portland’s 11th municipal organist in the 106-year history of the Kotzschmar Organ, a massive instrument built into the interior of Merrill Auditorium. It’s one of only two municipal organs in the U.S. with a municipal organist.
“This organ is so special,” Kennerley said. “Most pipe organs are in religious buildings, but this is in a concert hall. This organ was built to entertain people.”
The instrument has 7,000 individual hand-crafted pipes that produce a range of sounds ranging from “earth-rattling bass stops all the way up to the high pitches you need to have dog-whistle hearing to notice,” he said.
Kennerley, an Englishman who now lives in Boston, succeeded Ray Cornils, who held the part-time post of municipal organist for 27 years until his retirement. Kennerley is also the director of Music at Saint Paul’s Church and Choir School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a renowned composer, conductor and vocalist.
The Bach Birthday Bash will feature selections from the artist’s catalog and stories from Kennerley.
“I think being able to educate people on the music is so important,” he said. “People always say it makes the listening experience more enjoyable.”
The Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ is a nonprofit that formed in 1981 to maintain and preserve the century-old instrument and to produce and promote concerts.
Kirstein said the instrument appeals to a niche audience, but the Bach event is a great opportunity for people to be introduced to the pipe organ. The music is made for pipe organ, he said, and Kennerley, a scholar of the artist, always chooses selections that are engaging and energetic.
“There are many people in greater Portland who have never heard the Kotzschmar or know nothing about it,” Kirstein said.
Kennerley has been coming up from Boston once a week to practice ahead of the event. He said it’s usually in the early hours of the morning, in the dark. The first employees to arrive at Merrill Auditorium or Portland City Hall likely get to hear just as he’s wrapping up.
He’s eager to play the organ live again in front of an audience.
“I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like,” he said. “But I never take for granted that thrill.”
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