Christ Church - Philadelphia

World-renowned concert organist Levente Kuzma is featured in a performance of works by Bach, Buxtehude, Torelli, Liszt, Bossi, Grieg, and Vierne.

Fisk Opus 150 is the only mechanical-action organ of its kind in Philadelphia.

To study the church's sound audibility, singers and musicians performed for an acoustician at different locations and elevations in the sanctuary. Philadelphia's most renowned preservation architects then made historically sensitive improvements, including the construction of a new acoustic wall to close the gaping portal in the steeple tower, also part of the Trust's steeple preservation campaign.

Christ Church shipped the 19th-century wooden Erben case to Gloucester, Massachusetts, so the new organ could be built within it. There, the Fisk team had started the herculean process behind the making of a pipe organ.

For the new Christ Church instrument, welders cast, cut and shaped 3,099 pipes -- each one then moved to Christ Church and handled, adjusted, and tuned by builders from the Fisk team. Through rods of carbon fiber, artisans connected valves at the base of the pipes to the organ's keyboard: this direct mechanical connection, called "tracker action," allows the organist's fingertips to trigger the release of pressurized air through the pipes. As the source of a pipe organ's sound, mechanical tracker action replaces the electricity relied upon by mass-produced organs.