August 2013 Watch some of back breaking work of installing the pipe organ at Our Lady of Refuge in Brooklyn. The team from Quimby Pipe Organs did a meticulous job.
June 2013 The team from Quimby Pipe Organs hired an excellent local scaffolding and rigging company in Brooklyn to rig the organ into the loft almost none of the pipe organ would go up the stairs. This is a time lapse video of the organ console coming off the truck and being rigged up into the organ loft.
The week of June 17, 2013 the pipe organ arrives on two trucks from Ohio and Missouri at Our Lady of Refuge at 7am. The crew from Quimby Pipe Organs unloads the pipe organ and by the end of the day the pipe organ was laying all over the pews and floor of the church. Watch the 16 Foot Open Wood Diapason get carried into the church. Next was to get all off the floor of the church by Friday. A lot of work.
A sad day in March of 2007 when the pipe organ was removed from Our Lady of Refuge in Brooklyn so the church structure could be repair. The organ was shipped to Alliance Ohio to be stored. We did not know how we would do it but Fr. Perry and Joe Vitacco found a way with God help and the help of lots of people on social media from around the world.
Watch videos of the newly restored pipe organ at Our Lady of Refuge in Brooklyn New York. Here you will see the removal, triumphant return, dedication, and many other interesting stories.
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio the Bishop of Brooklyn blesses the pipe organ. Father Michael Perry, the Pastor of Our Lady of Refuge, calls out to organ eight times as part of the blessing service and Olivier Latry, Organist from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris improvises responses based on the text of Father Perry's exhortations.
Over 700 people pack the church for this night that was 6 years in the making through the generosity of over 1500 people. The work was carried out by two of the finest organ builders in the United States A.R. Schopp's Sons and Quimby Pipe Organs.
October 18, 2013 Bob Schopp and Michael Quimby are publicly thanked by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio and Father Perry for their organ building firm's extraordinary work restoring the pipe organ at Our Lady of Refuge
October 26, 2013 Daniel Brondel conducted his choir at the 5pm Mass. In this video the choir sings the hymn Praise My Soul the King of Heaven accompanied on the organ by Stephen Thrap.
June 17, 2013 The Restored Pipe Organ arrived at Our Lady of Refuge Church. Over the next 6 weeks a team of 2 to 10 men from Quimby Pipe Organs worked 12 hours a day 5 1/2 days a week to have to organ playing better then new by Labor Day Weekend. The work that A.R. Schopp's Sons and Quimby Pipe Organs did in restoring and reinstalling this pipe organ is magnificent.