SUMNER — Students in Megan Andrews Wright’s music classes had a crash course on the organ Thursday, thanks to the sponsorship of the Nezinscot Valley Music Boosters and Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ.
Ray Cornils, organist for the city of Portland, introduced the students to the music of J.S. Bach and how the bellows work on a Kotzschmar Junior portable organ. He students pump the bellows to provide the air for the pipes after he unplugged the power for the air pump.
Cornils said the organ has been around for more than 2,000 years and when there was no electricity, the bellows had to be pumped by hand or foot.
He demonstrated on the portable organ, which is trucked to schools to teach students about the instrument, said Elsa Geskus, educational coordinator for Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ, a nonprofit group that supports the Kotzschmar Organ in Merrill Auditorium in Portland.
Cornils told the students he started piano lessons at age 7 and organ lessons at 13.
The final class in the unit will be a trip for the fifth-graders to the First Parish Church in Brunswick, where they will hear a concert and see that organ up close.
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- Ray Cornils shows Cheyanne Goroshin and Maggie Bragg the Kotzschmar Junior Organ at the Hartford-Sumner Elementary School in Sumner on Thursday.
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