Updates for January 2026

31 January 2026

A Happy New Year to all of our visitors and supporters.

The past couple of months have been dominated by current and pending installation of four new organs in tiny Macau. First, MAC2025a has been renumbered MAC2025, as none of the other the instruments discussed below were ready during the 2025 calendar year. MAC2025, the 1870 Walker relocated to St. Lawrence’s Church, was finally dedicated on 21 January 2026 as the Padre Áureo Castro Memorial Pipe Organ. The organist was Olga Wong. 

A new Casavant Inspiration model organ (MAC2026a) has been installed at Macau’s Academia de Música São Pio X. This two-manual instrument incorporates a large number of digital voices from Viscount on a third manual. The Project had written to Casavant for details of just how these digital stops function, but as of the end of January no reply has been received. 

A second Inspiration model from Casavant has been installed in the Macau Baptist Church. The specs are not yet known to us, but a visit is planned to the site in April for what will be MAC2026b once it is added to the Census. 

The third and remaining organ under installation is the large Casavant for the Cathedral, originally planned for 2018. The cases, consoles, and pipework appears to be installed, but the voicing is taking time. Our guess is that MAC2026c will only be ready around Easter. When we have further details, we will post them. 

An organ festival and Young Organists Competition was held in Hong Kong at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Music in late December and early January. This featured the two new Fisk organs (HKG2025b and HKG2025c), recitals, master classes, and a competition. The final round was held on 4 January, and the three performers all received a Second Prize. 

From our friends at Shanghai Pi Organ Industrial, we have learned that the new Rieger in the Grand Theatre in Wuxi has been installed, and that voicing is now going on (see photo below). This organ appears to have been influenced, at least in terms of the façade, by the design of the 2004 Rosales organ in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. They have also informed us that the new organ for the Concert Hall at the School of Music, Chinese University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen, will start to be installed in April. 

We further wish all our friends and supporters a Happy Chinese New Year of the Horse, which will occur on 17 February (yes, and also Shrove Tuesday this year! 

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