2014 SUMMER CONCERT SERIES: SACRED MUSIC IN A SACRED SPACE

LEWISTON — The Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul on Ash St. will host a summer concert series that is free and open to the public. Donations to restore the Casavant Organ will be accepted.

At 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12, organist Rich Spotts will perform in concert. Spotts, a native of Bucks County, Penn. and a graduate of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, has set out to perform and educate the public of this seminal work, with the ultimate goal of performing the complete 15-hour cycle in a recital series over a period of 10 days.

This project has taken him to parishes and cathedrals far afield such as the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, Trinity Copley Square in Boston, and the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. in addition to churches in Atlanta, Miami, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Québec City. Spotts has given over 60 recitals involving 50 institutions in the United States and Canada and he is now in the process of writing a book on the subject.

Spotts’ recital features movements from Charles Tournemire seminal work, L’Orgue Mystique. Although today Tournemire is shrouded in popular obscurity, Tournemire was one of the greatest organists of his day with his mystical organ style directly influencing the works of Olivier Messiaen, Ermend-Bonnal, Joseph Bonnet, Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, Jehan Alain, Maurice Duruflé and Jean Langlais. Born in Bordeaux in 1870, Tournemire, who was a student of César Franck and Charles Marie Widor, became organist of Sainte-Clotilde in 1898, a post Tournemire retained until his death in 1939.