First & Grand

 

First & Grand represents the premiere recording on the one-of-a-kind pipe organ at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, home of the L.A. Philharmonic.  The music is classical, the performer is a master at his artistry, but Bull has taken the pipe organ to the next level and is blazing trails beyond the boundaries.  Christoph Bull has been called “Tiger Woods of the organ,” the “rock star organist,” and the “most versatile musician on the planet”.

 

You’re doing for the world of organ what Tiger Woods

is doing for the game of golf! 

Now everyone will love coming to an organ concert.

~Gerry Biggs McGrath, American Guild Of Organists

 

The Disney Hall organ is the most unique pipe organ in the world in that its façade has curved, versus straight pipes. It was co-designed by the architect of the equally innovative concert hall, Frank Gehry. The organ was built in collaboration by the L.A. firm Rosales Organ Builders and the German-based Glatter-Götz Orgelbau. So it is only befitting that First & Grand celebrates the organ’s uniqueness with an equally groundbreaking recording.

 

Beautiful organ playing, and if you don’t like organ, you’ll

change your mind after hearing this!

~Tom Schnabel, KCRW, about First & Grand

 

 

 

Organist Christoph Bull views the organ as a ‘rock’ instrument and the 6,134 pipes of the Disney Hall organ offers the power and color he wanted for his new album.  First & Grand shows the many colors a pipe organ can produce, the strength of the instrument in general and in particular the awesome dynamism that the Disney Hall organ possesses. The line-up of pieces comes from a contemporary view of classical music. It includes some of the best pieces in the repertoire such as Bach’s “Prelude and Fugue in A minor” (BWV 432), Nicolaus Bruhns’ “Little Prelude in E minor,” and an organ arrangement of Samuel Barber’s famous “Adagio For Strings.”

 

[Bull] served up a massive, moving sound [with] conspicuous

musicality, serious chops and deep instrumental understanding.

~L.A. Times

 

Bull also improvises and expands on themes by Beethoven, Couperin, and an anonymous medieval composer. To that he adds his own “A minor Trance” and ‘neo-classical’ readings of Lennon/McCartney’s ”A Day In The Life,” the movie score “Winnetou-Melodie,” and a nod to Walt Disney, “When You Wish Upon A Star.”

 

This is an album that can be appreciated by hard-core organ connoisseurs and music lovers new to the instrument. It was made with a sense of this being an exciting moment in the history of music and organ music, and as someone said, “It’s the real thing.”