I just direct the choir so I stand in front of the basses. We have risers and can comfortably house about 25 people. The choir members congregate around the organ with (as I face them) the sops on the left, altos behind the console through the middle, tenors in the back on the right and basses in front of them. The organ pipes are in the middle along with the console. Our loft was an afterthought, when the founding pastor was offered a pipe organ. When we do build, I'm pushing for a proper pipe organ. We're looking into building a new church, but we're at least 5 years away from even breaking ground. There is also a floor lamp in the loft, just in case. Issue is that if you're up there and the last person out doesn't know it, you're in the dark until you can get downstairs to turn them on again. The loft itself has two lights on the wall, which provide more than enough light to see when they are turned on. There is a small music library attached (about a 6 X 6 room with storage cabinets), but the light in there is on a timer and is not reliable (interesting how nobody knows how to neither reset it nor disable it): during night services, you can't see in the music library. Peter that provides the most beautiful light when the sun shines. There is one large, stained glass window in the center of the outside wall at the back of the loft (which is located at the back of the church), with an image of St. The loft mainly serves as extra seating for parishioners as our congregations are steadily increasing in size, pushing the limits of what our small mission church can hold. We have two tiers of chairs for the choir, although nobody sits in the upper tier because we don't have that many in the choir, and I suspect we never did. The Leslie sits on a small two-shelf cabinet that also houses TONS of old music that cannot be used any longer since the new translation of the Roman Missal happened. Our loft can handle probably 15-20 people (if you really squeeze them in), plus the Leslie 122 in one corner and the Hammond BV console in the other (at the front of the loft). Our church is small, so the choir loft is too. It remains in working condition and is an important part of the musical heritage of this parish." About 1980, the Lurth Organ Company of Mankato, Minnesota rebuilt the instrument and further developed its tonal capacities. The organ, as pipe organs often do, fell into bad times and was badly abused by an organ builder during the 1960’s. Its three divisions, one on either side of the lower balcony and one on the upper balcony where the console was originally located, remains an impressive site and sound to the present day. Dedicated in 1935, it has since been rebuilt but retains the original design. Father Cieminski apparently had an interest in music and was responsible for the purchase and installation of a three-manual pipe organ thought to be built originally by the Skinner Pipe Organ Company. This building was to be the pride of the Polish community for decades to come. Its seating capacity at that time was 1800 and it included two balconies, one above the other. ".the present Romanesque style church was built and dedicated in 1895. No mother would have designed that, because the hike to the loft, with little children in tow, is cumbersome. I have envisioned the number of singers that could be placed in these 2 balconies! (It should be mentioned that the lower, larger loft could be much deeper, but for some reason, the cry room (you can see the window behind the singers in the picture) was placed up there. I have stood in both of these balconies, and the view of the church floor is amazing. Another picture in the other link is of the two stacked balconies. One of the loft pictures gives a view of the left-hand side it stretches equally far on the right side. I am sorry that I don't have any dimensions to give you, but if you look at a couple of the pictures included in the following 2 links, you can perhaps get a sense of the height and breadth of this space. Donr, I am awed by the expanse of the semi-circular choir loft at the Basilica of St.
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