Renovations Near Completion in Time for Free Concerts at Ocean Grove's Historic Great Auditorium

Worship services, classical concerts, choral events, and organ concerts will take place all summer long, starting on Sunday, June 11th.

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First built and installed in 1908 (and now much enlarged), Ocean Grove's historic Great Auditorium Pipe Organ is undergoing an extensive renovation that will enhance its sound and improve its longevity in the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association's 5000+ seat tabernacle, which hosts worship services, classical concerts, choral events, and organ concerts all summer long, starting on Sunday, June 11th.

The renovation began last Fall and has continued throughout the Winter and Spring, according to Dr. Gordon Turk, OGCMA'S veteran Organist & Artist-in-Residence.

During those months, 3,700 pipes - nearly 30% of the total pipe inventory of 13,000 pipes - were removed, cleaned, tuned, re-wired and individually reinstalled in new groupings, with the addition of several new windchests (on which the pipes stand) and also new reservoirs which supply air to the individual windchests.

The entire project will wrap in June, just in time for summer worship services and free organ concerts which feature Gordon as well as special guest organists all summer long.

A full-time crew of three organ builders have been engineering this project, which was funded by private, individual donations.

Ocean Grove's Great Auditorium Pipe Organ is among the largest working pipe organs in the world, and is the heart beat of this historic Christian/Victorian seaside community. The mammoth instrument of 13,000+ pipes (made of metal or wood, depending on the tonal characteristics of the individual pipes) was built and installed in 1908 with original design innovations that became standard elements still extant in modern organ construction. It is made of over 40,000 feet of California No. 1 Sugar Pine and weighs 20 - 25 tons. In its illustrious 108-year-history, this remarkable instrument has been played by numerous distinguished organists, including Will C. MacFarlane, Clarence Kohlman, Josephine Eddowes, Harold Fix, Clarence Reynolds, Beverly Davis, Jon Quinn, and Robert Carwithin, the legendary concert organist Virgil Fox, and many organists from Europe and the US.

Whatever it is you’re doing this summer, enjoy it. Take time to care and tend to yourself in ways that you’re not able to during the school year. Read, relax, laugh, make memories. Challenge yourself personally and professionally. Restore your zest for life while the sun is still shining!

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