What People Say

“One might expect that a composite of 17 organs could result in an awkward miscellany, but having honed his historian-restorer-visionary skills over 60 years, Barden combined these diverse elements into a unified artistic expression, seemingly as a fulfillment of Skinner’s vision.
The 1920s-style symphonic organ, which contains restored pipework from 17 E. M. Skinner instruments, stands 62% complete. Skinner designed pipes which could capture orchestral instruments such as English horn, French horn, Tuba as well as many types of flute and string sound in an astonishingly convincing manner.

The pipes speak into the church from chambers above the two side aisles which stretch over 100 feet down both sides of the nave. The abundance of sound and also the quadraphonic effect of the various divisions captivated this listener. The church’s favorable acoustics result from the narrow and high shape of the worship space and the hard surfaces of tile floor and walls; the disposition of the instrument over both long side aisles also places pipes near every listener.”
—Lois Regestein (Boston Musical Intelligencer, October 2018)

“…I had the tremendous pleasure of playing the marvelous organ in the stunning and reverberant Church of the Transfiguration in Orleans, MA (on the Cape) this past Sunday in a huge program of works by Widor, Roger-Ducasse, Willan, Hollins, and Wagner. To be brief, this vast collection of early 20th-century vintage Skinner pipework, lovingly preserved, assembled, restored, and brought together into this successful whole by the inimitable Nelson Barden just blew me away!”
—Nathan Laube (Facebook, October 2018)