1977 Recording of CHS's Skinner Organ

Serendipity struck when a reader of the recent Matters Magazine Article on Columbia's Skinner just happened to also have a recording of the same instrument... with himself at the console. Bob Bausmith writes:

"Here’s a glimpse of what the CHS Skinner used to sound like! This is a recording of yours truly playing J.S. Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” during a student recital in Spring 1977. I was a senior at the time and had been studying organ for about a year.
The MP3 was created directly from a reel-to-reel tape recording. The tape seems to have shrunk a little over the past 31 years, as evidenced by the pitch of the organ on the recording being slightly higher than it was at the time of the recording."

Bach on a Skinner in 1977 would have made purists scream, but the then-18-year-old Bausmith clearly demonstrates how the symphonic sound of CHS's Skinner can be applied to this iconic organ piece.

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Second, if you have an iPod, you should really just download this MP3 and add it to your library... Computer speakers do organs no justice.