ilona kubiaczyk-adler organist

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/310771236/1719-hildebrandt-organ-recording

I have a deep and long-lasting love of the pipe organ. I spent much of my life training to be a professional organist in Polish, Dutch and American conservatories under world-renowned musicians.  I regularly travel great distances to see organs and play concerts. Each pipe organ is unique; each one has a distinct voice and a particular story to tell. Historical organs are among my personal favorites – to hear the sounds of previous centuries creates the feeling of travelling through time.

The Hildebrandt organ from 1719 in Pasłęk, Poland is a remarkable gem. Many historical organs that survived World War II received some maintenance under communism – however, because the exchange of knowledge with Western Europe was closed off, not all restorations benefitted the organs (and a few were actually detrimental). The Hildebrandt organ in Pasłęk is a statement of the change in post-communist Poland – a valuable monument, treated with utmost respect, restored to its historical beauty by the German organ builder Wegscheider from Dresden, and maintained with a lot of care. I travelled to Poland soon after its inauguration in 2013, and the result took my breath away.

This summer I was invited to perform a recital on this organ, and I have a unique opportunity to record an album. This recording will be a collection of my favorite pieces of organ repertoire by composers that lived and worked around the time and geographical area in which this organ was made (Jan Podbielski, Johann Jakob Froberger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Gottlieb Graun, Georg Böhm, Dieterich Buxtehude, Felix Mendelssohn). One exception is a piece by my favorite composer of all, Jacob Adler J.

Your financial support will allow me to pay for most of the expenses involved in recording and releasing a high quality, professional album. The recording session will take 3 days, and I will work with several collaborators: an organ builder trained in tuning and maintaining historical organs, two sound engineers, a registrant who will help change the organ stops while playing, a calcant who will manually pump the bellows to provide air to the organ (there was no electricity in 1719!), and an artist who will take photos and videos and create a custom CD booklet. The master copy of the recording will be duplicated in the US.