Music Program

Ministry of Music:  Michael Lodico is our new Director of Music at Wye Parish.  He was born in 1981 and is a native of Western North Carolina.  Michael began studying the piano at the age of 6 and the organ at the age of 13. Lodico received a Bachelor of Music degree from the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia having studied the organ with John Weaver and Alan Morrison, improvisation with Matthew Glandorf, and the piano with Meng Cheih-Liu and Susan Starr.  He recently returned from Europe having been the recipient of a Netherlands-America Foundation/Fulbright Scholarship and obtained a Master's Degree in music, studying organ under Jacques van Ootmerssen at the Amsterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands.  Michael Lodico has participated in festivals and workshops in Canada, England, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United States.  Recently he completed a concert tour of recitals at English and Scottish Cathedrals.  We are honored to have Michael as our Director of Music at Wye Parish and look forward to experiencing the results of his musical endeavors.

Primary Musical Instruments

At Old Wye:

In 1991 the vestry of Wye Parish commissioned the firm J. W. Walker & Sons, Ltd., Brandon (Suffolk), England, to design and build an instrument which would compliment this small but historic parish church, while meeting diverse liturgical and cultural needs. Utilizing the “selective duplexing” technique first used by its organ-building ancestor, Renatus Harris, in his Salisbury Cathedral organ of 1710, Walker created a two manual organ accommodated in the space normally suited for a single manual. The instrument is housed in a beautifully fretted cherry case which serves to focus and project the sound, and it employs mechanical key action, a technique little changed over 400 years of organ building. This traditional style of action gives the player intimate control over the speech of the pipes -- and it should last for centuries.

OLD WYE ORGAN SPECIFICATIONS

2 Manuals and Pedal
Mechanical Tracker Action
7 Speaking Stops, 8 Ranks, 3 Couplers, 423 Pipes

Compass of MANUALS I / II: C - c, 61 notes (selectively duplexed)

Compass of PEDAL: C - g, 32 notes

Walker used a variety of materials imported from many countries in the construction of the Old Wye instrument, including American cherry, poplar, basswood, and western red cedar; Canadian maple and pine; African blackwood; and tin from Thailand. The pipes are made of wood or various alloys of tin and lead according to the tone required from each rank.

The organ was constructed in Walker’s workshops in England, and was then disassembled and packed in a sea going container for its journey to America. Its installation at Old Wye was undertaken by the same team of skilled organ builders involved in its initial construction. The organ was formally dedicated at a recital on April 25, 1993.


At St. Luke’s:

Simultaneously with its commissioning of the Walker organ at Old Wye, the vestry of Wye Parish authorized the procurement of a Rodgers Cambridge 735 electronic organ for St. Luke’s. This instrument reproduces the voices of a thirty-eight rank pipe organ by adaptation of parallel digital imaging technology, and provides countryside chapels such as St. Luke’s with an introduction to the inspiration of organ music once available only to larger urban congregations.

ST. LUKE’S ORGAN SPECIFICATIONS

2 Manuals and Pedal
Parallel Digital Imaging Technology
38 Speaking Voices, 9 Couplers, Swell, 6 Audio Channels

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