Virgil Fox, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL. Come Sweetest Death, Come Blessed Rest - J.S. Bach. Tuesday evening April 27th 1971 part 2. Virgil kicking some serious electronic ass and drawing a lot of Amps from the 216 Amplifiers LOL. I suspect the use of the 64 foot Gravissima stop here! Please use a sub-woofer to be able to reproduce this, it's worth it. In my opinion this is a very rich and dimensional sound for such an early pure analog electronic Classical organ. The quality is limited since I obtained this recording on compact cassette from my late father, and it originally came from a Sforzando library reel at 7 1/2 IPS quarter track stereo, copied from a master tape by the late Jim Felton. I was given it as a child in the 1980's by my dad since my father was a Theatre organ nut, and I wasn't, I liked the Classical organ instead! I took this to School and played it on the portable Super Woofer tape deck (ghetto blaster) many, many times over years during morning assembly at Cowley High, Hard Lane, in the small Music Room where Conn organ was, whilst everyone else was in assembly listening to the drivel LOL. Also I played this many times also at lunch time in the large class room next to the main door adjacent to the small Music Room, on the Technics music system with the decent speakers in there of maybe 80 Watts / channel, the whole room reverberated, I must have driven Mr. Dobbs the music teacher completely nuts! I was and still am a huge Virgil Fox fan. I did later in life try and contact Jim Felton but by that time he was dead and his wife wrote a kind letter to me explaining things. I did offer the Feltons some money if I remember right and asked in exchange for the recorded open reel tapes of that concert but she didn't reply about that and instead said that his sons were not able to make a copy for me (something about they didn't know how if I remember) so I'm afraid that was a dead end despite my best efforts. I did try and contact E. A. Rawlings, the keeper of the Sforzando library copies, but he had alzheimers and his wife replied and again she couldn't help me except to say that someone called Russ McKaig had been given all of the equipment and tapes. So I managed to contact Russ through his Son, and tried to get a copy on 7 inch open reel @ 7 1/2 IPS but I seem to remember that for some reason he could not do this, and instead sent me a cassette copy, which was at a significantly faster / higher pitch and had one channel that was too low and the quality wasn't so great. I will try to upload that later on. I am sticking at the moment with this one as it actually sounds better I think. I remember that Russ had health problems at the time and may be dead now unfortunately. I'll try and contact him and his Son and maybe I'll get a copy on CD-R from the open reel, here's hoping. Although I gave up last time I tried...the whole thing was like pulling teeth...boy I wish there was a commercial recording available of this but there was definitely never one made. The e-mail from Thomas H. Cotner continued ;- "The left (main) chamber contained the Pedal, Great, and Choir. The right chamber, which was near the ceiling of the auditorium (and had originally been the dressing room for Najinsky) contained the speakers for the Swell and Solo/bombarde. (As I remember -- it is possible the Choir and Solo were reversed -- but it has been 30 years, and I recite this from memory.) During the installation, the office of the mayor, Richard J. Daley, got into the act and insisted that the wiring be done by his patronage electricians. So, in order to accommodate that, we had to train them -- provide them with tools, and sit there and tell them where to place each wire, and then what to do with it after they were placed. I put up with this for one week -- just long enough to get one division playing, then played it for them, told them how much we appreciated their work, then thanked them and sent them on their way, and completed the job myself in about 1/4 the time they were taking. They really did not know that they had only done part of it -- since it played (or what they thought was the complete organ, played). Fred Swann had been promised the opening concert in exchange for his help in the final design (he was responsible for the bombarde chorus). Then Virgil Fox got wind of it, and decided he was the one to open such an instrument -- in such a prestigious hall (it wasn't, really) so he contacted the owners of Saville, and offered his services -- which they promptly accepted -- thinking that he was a more well known organist than Fred -- and hired him for the first concert -- which included, at Virgil's insistence, a scaled down symphony orchestra and the services of Maestro Victor Allessandro - then director of the San Antonio, Texas, symphony. This ****ed Fred off considerably, and [edited] - I suppose, thinking I had something to do with it -- which I did not." See part 1 for more description!