GUILFORD — After having just climbed his eighth mountain of the summer, Mount Moosilauke in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, 78-year-old William McKim is ready to take on another monumental endeavor: performing the organ music of the Baroque.
McKim says he believes that the late 17th and early 18th centuries were among - and may top - the greatest periods for music written for the organ.
On Saturday, Aug. 30, at 7:30 p.m., McKim presents a recital on the circa-1897 Tracker Organ in the Organ Barn as the opening event of Friends of Music at Guilford's 49th annual Labor Day Weekend Festival.
In “Bs of the Baroque & More” he will perform works by Baroque composers and 19th-century masters.
“I thought I would break the monotony of the Baroque and throw in a little Brahms,” says McKim. “The 19th century was also a wonderful period for organ music, especially that written by French Romantics and by Brahms, who was not an organist and did not write much music for the organ. His music is contained in a slim, 55-page volume, yet all of it is superb.”
Soprano Geralyn Donohue will be featured in a Bach aria accompanied by flute and cello. Other works include Preludes and Fugues in E minor and G minor by Nicolaus Bruhns, and the Toccata and Fugue in F, as well as a ricercare by Dietrich Buxtehude and the romantic A Prelude and Fugue by Brahms.
A reception follows.
The festival continues on Sunday, Aug. 31, at 2 p.m., as Ken Olsson conducts the Guilford Festival Orchestra, composed of players from the Tri-State Area and further afield, in the world premiere of “Three Ballads” by Guilford resident Zeke Hecker and sung by mezzo-soprano Jessica Gelter.
The concert includes a lesser-known Mozart symphony (No. 33 in B flat), as well as works by Janacek, Gounod, and Rachmaninoff, and ends with an a cappella sing-in of Randall Thompson's “Alleluia.”
A reception follows this concert also. Both events are free, though donations are welcome.
The Organ Barn shines
The Organ Barn is one of the great jewels and curiosities of Guilford.
Hecker tells the history of the Guilford organ on its website, www.fomag.org. Teacher and amateur musician Arthur Graham Down needed an organ for daily practice and didn't want to commute to Brattleboro to play on various church organs. He searched New England and found a tracker (mechanical) action organ in a Maine barn. In 1965 Down had the instrument transported to Guilford, restored, and planted in a neighbor's barn.
Built around 1897, probably for a church in Maine, it was restored in Vermont with a new pedal board by John Wessel and metal pipes by Anderson Organ Pipe Co. of Guilford.
Friends of Music at Guilford acquired the instrument in 1975. Lawrence Nievin completed renovations in 1998, and he continues caring for the instrument. Its keyboard was refurbished in 2007.
McKim has performed eight recitals in the Organ Barn. He says he came to the organ late in life. He began his career as a pianist and still plays that instrument professionally. McKim studied piano at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he graduated with honors. He later undertook graduate studies at Boston University.
He concertized as pianist in the Boston area, where he appeared on public and commercial television. He also gave 19 recitals at the Isabella Gardner Museum.
The value of connection
McKim's earliest encounters with organ music were in adolescence as a student at St. Paul's in Concord, N.H. Channing Lefebvre, the music director there, was the president of the American Guild of Organists, and he gave a weekly organ recital and daily chapel services.
“He was a great influence on me,” says McKim. “Every note I play is influenced by those days: my repertoire and my passion for the instrument.”
McKim moved to Brattleboro then taught at the Putney School (1974 to 1979). It was only when he left there that he took up the organ.
“The organ became my retirement avocation,” says McKim.
As a pianist he already knew how to work an organ keyboard, but he needed to learn how to use the pedal board. So McKim began working with accomplished organists in the area to master this. When he did, he began his second musical career.
McKim became organist for First Congregational Church in West Brattleboro, and then music director for the Methodist Church in Springfield, where, in addition to playing the organ, he staged Menotti's one-act opera Amahl and the Night Visitors.
From 1994 until 2000 he was music director and organist for Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, where he often gave Sunday afternoon recitals.
He says he might best be known in the area for accompanying the Friends of Music's annual Community Messiah Sing in Brattleboro:
“I did that for 26 years straight. I only recently retired in order to be able to enjoy my Decembers. However, I was called back last year when the new organist was not available on that date.”
Although he enjoys retirement, McKim still gives frequent recitals at The Gathering Place and other assisted living and nursing homes.
'It's all for fun and love'
McKim confesses that his goal in the upcoming concert at the Organ Barn is just to have a great time: “I will be playing music I have played for decades, some 30 times or more. This is music I truly love.”
The concert includes works by Bach as well as Bruhns and Buxtehude, who were prominent in the generation before Bach.
“Given his music's brilliance and profound depth, no one does it better than Bach,” says McKim. “Bach was the Aaron Copland of the Baroque era. His music summed up all that was written 100 years before and he took it to an intellectual level no one could do better. He was so brilliant that even his sons found they had to compose in a different direction than their father.”
McKim will set the stage for his repertoire with informative comments and anecdotes.
“But is all about joy and fun and less talk,” he assures us.
Earning the view from up top
Nearing his 80s, McKim has the stamina for a concert like this because he works to keep fit by mountain climbing.
“It is a hobby I began after college,” he says. “So far this year, I have climbed eight mountains with an ascent of over 1,000 feet. I climb Monadnock every year and train myself by climbing Mount Wantastiquet. My inspiration for mountain climbing was probably the bedtime stories my mother told me about the Adirondacks, which filled me with joy.”
The Labor Day Weekend Festival is at the Organ Barn, off Packer Corners Road in Guilford; signs are posted along a nine-mile route from the Guilford Country Store on Route 5, just south of Exit 1 off I-91, and along a five-mile route from the Keets Brook Road turnoff along Route 5 in Bernardston, Mass.
For the Sunday concert, the grounds open to picnickers at noon. Children are welcome with parental supervision, but dogs are asked to remain at home.
A hearty vegetarian lunch, warm chocolate chip cookies, and refreshing lemonade are available for sale, as are a variety of Friends of Music retail items.
In case of rain, or serious threat thereof, the Sunday event is moved to the Broad Brook Grange, four miles up the Guilford Center Road from the Country Store, on Route 5.