MIT Chapel Organ Breathes New Life

Guest Blogger: Leonardo Ciampa

Sometimes when you knock on doors, you have no idea what they will open to reveal.

In the summer of 2009, I was out of work—a difficult circumstance for anyone, but especially challenging in my field: I play the organ. To spread the word around Boston that I was available as a substitute organist, I cold-called Dr. Robert Randolph, chaplain to the Institute, to ask for a five-minute meeting. Designed by architect Eero Saarinen, a mid-century master who designed the St. Louis Arch, the chapel has a beautifully designed organ, built in 1955 by the renowned Holtkamp Organ Company of Cleveland, OH.

Rather than brush me off, Dr. Randolph embraced the opportunity to use the organ as it was intended. We initiated a series of Thursday noontime organ concerts, featuring different organists from the area as well as from across the country and around the world. Meanwhile, Dr. Randolph started Tuesdays in the Chapel, a series of weekly, non-denominational morning services for prayer and reflection. The result has been more than a year of beautiful music on MIT’s campus—free and open to anyone in the community.

I never tire of playing the organ in the chapel. The organ was literally made for Saarinen's space, and the marriage of instrument and room is one of the happiest unions that I have ever encountered as a musician. One hesitates to use the word “perfect” to describe art, but the organ does indeed sound perfect in the extraordinary acoustics of the chapel. Every time I press the keys, I am enchanted by the way that the pipes' gentle but brilliant sound fills that space.

I cannot possibly convey how transporting it is to make music in the chapel amid the sunlight rippling from below off the water in the moat and cascading from above on Bertoia's steel sculpture. But you can experience it yourself by coming to a Tuesdays in the chapel service or one of our concerts.

Check the schedule for upcoming chapel concerts.

Hear Ciampa performing Bach, Cook, Buxtehude, and other composers on the MIT Chapel organ (click on New Year's Organ Broadcast). Ciampa is now director of music at Christ Lutheran Church in Natick, MA.