Awesome Pipe Organ

Organist Anna Lapwood provides an in-depth yet easy-to-understand explanation of how pipe organs work using the massive 3574-pipe organ at St John’s Smith Square in London. Along the way, you’ll learn about its pipes, wind chests, stops, pedals, and manuals, as well as hear some very different kinds of sounds it can produce.

If there’s one genre of music we never thought we’d hear on a pipe organ, it’s disco. But it’s the internet, and here we are. So put on your boogie shoes, click play, and listen as organist Vincent Thévenaz plays the 1977 Bee Gees hit Stayin’ Alive on the Great Organ at Geneva, Switzerland’s Cathédrale Saint-Pierre.

Better known to most as the theme music from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, John Philip Sousa’s The Liberty Bell March suits the sounds of a pipe organ very well indeed. Turn up your speakers and enjoy this lively performance by Jonathan Scott on the big Wurlitzer in Neuadd Pendre, Tywyn, Wales.

We never heard of a portative organ before, but it’s a type of small pipe organ that uses a bellows to push wind through its pipes. Nippocast spent a year building such an instrument from scratch and boiled down his efforts into this 20-minute time-lapse video. You can hear how the finished organ sounds here.

Hans Zimmer’s score from the movie Interstellar is one of the most powerful in recent memory. It’s even more impressive performed on the massive Walcker pipe organ at St. Paul’s Church in Strasbourg, France. The bigger the speakers you can play this through, the better. Arranged and performed by Antonino Buschiazzo.

Since witnessing the horror of The Exorcist in our youth, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells gives us chills every time we hear it. We think it’s even more creepy when performed on a church pipe organ, as demonstrated by musician Theo Hes and his helper flipping some of the controls.

While at the 2021 Transworld Halloween and Attractions Show in St. Louis, music director Tom BetGeorge (of Halloween lightshow fame) showed off his keyboard skills by playing Bach’s ominous Toccata and Fugue in D minor on a pipe organ that breathes fire as its keys are pressed. The organ was built by Johnathan Elkins.

A pipe organ is about the last instrument that comes to mind when we think of the pop-punk sounds of Green Day. But Wir sind da likes to defy expectations. So here it is in all its glory – a cover of Boulevard of Broken Dreams on a church organ. Check out their channel for more unexpected covers, including some Backstreet Boys.

Musician Jonathan Scott turned in an awe-inspiring performance of a tune normally reserved for a full orchestra – Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt. He played the solo arrangement on the gigantic pipe organ located at Müpa Budapest in Hungary. We can only imagine what this sounded like in person.

The Grissini Project presents an appropriately grand and epic performance of Ramin Djawadi’s main theme from Game of Thrones, playing it partially on a giant pipe organ, grand piano, and cello. Their cover of Light of the Seven, is even more impressive.