Updates for February 2025
28 February 2025Updates to The Pipe Organ in China Project Website for February 2025:
A new continuo organ (HKG2025a) has been installed in St. John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong by Diego Cera Organ Builders. This is a landmark instrument, despite its small size (4 ranks, 5 voices, 8 stops), as it is the first pipe organ installed in the Anglican Cathedral since 1927, 98 years ago. The Project is waiting for a site visit next week by Project founder Prof. David Francis Urrows. Photos should be available then, and the organ has already been added to the Census without them for the present time.
Prof. Urrows was also invited to give a lecture at the 50th International Bamboo Organ Festival at Las Piñas, Philippines, on 22 February, on the topic “Foreign Missions and Bamboo Organs”, in which he sketched the 500-year history of Western pipe organs with bamboo pipes, especially those made in mission contexts, such as the bamboo organs in Shanghai of the 1850s-60s.
Word has reached the Project of an exciting development in Macau. An 1870 Walker two-manual and Pedal organ is to be reinstalled at St. Lawrence (São Lourenço) Church. Originally built by the Jesuits prior to 1560, the building was replaced in 1846, and a further renovation in the 1880s gave the church its present form. The new ‘vintage’ organ will match the church’s interior very well, and finally bring another Walker organ to China, as all the organs by this noted British firm installed before the Second World War have disappeared.
The two new Fisk organs for Hong Kong Baptist University are reported underway by sea freight, scheduled for arrival in Hong Kong around the start of April.
Organs in the Census: 212
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