(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
That's the new organ at Trinity Church in Manhattan. The previous organ was built in 1923 and damaged in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Now, 25 years later, the new pipe organ is finally complete. NPR's Quil Lawrence went to hear it and hear all about it.
MICHAEL BIRD: Hey there. I'm Father Michael Bird.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Bird is the vicar of Trinity Church on Wall Street.
So tell us where we're standing.
BIRD: So right now, we're standing in the sanctuary of Trinity Church, built in 1846. A fun fact - at the time, it was the tallest building in the United States.
LAWRENCE: Wow.
(LAUGHTER)
BIRD: Hard to imagine that now, given the height of the neighborhood.
LAWRENCE: It is tall. The stone spire reaches up 281 feet, and the vaulted ceiling inside fills the space with soft light through stained glass. But talking about the tallest building in the country, your mind flashes to the towers that used to stand nearby.
BIRD: The tragedy of that day, the destruction of that day, but it was singular in its own way and, for us, was a call to in the midst of all of that destruction, be a force of love and care and compassion and hope and, in the long term, of healing. That's what the city needed of Trinity Church.
LAWRENCE: And if the building could speak - actually, it does speak.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BIRD: As you're standing here, you get a sense for it when the organ turns on, right? And one of the things that we love about a pipe organ is that it has thousands of voices.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BIRD: There's something about thousands of voices joining together to sing something that feels like the unity we want in our city, the unity of purpose and possibility and hope.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL CHIMING)
LAWRENCE: A bell chimes to start a service in a small chapel off to the side. It lets parishioners step away from the crowd of tourists in the main hall. This space is just for prayers.
UNIDENTIFIED PARISHIONERS: (Praying, inaudible).
LAWRENCE: It's got a smaller, quieter organ finished in 2023.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LAWRENCE: Avi Stein is the organist for Trinity Church. After the service, Stein offers to take us into the pipes.
AVI STEIN: We can go up. All right. So watch your heads.
LAWRENCE: Through a secret door in the entryway, he takes us - me and producer Janet Woojeong Lee - up some nearly vertical stairs into the voice of the building.
JANET WOOJEONG LEE, BYLINE: So it's accurate to say, we're, like, inside the organ right now?
STEIN: We are inside the organ. These are pipes. They are just giant penny whistles, the lowest of which, as you see, is 32 feet long.
LAWRENCE: The metal pipes range from the size of lamp posts to trombones, down to little whistles, just an inch long.
STEIN: Below us is a box filled with compressed air. And if I push the right note, then a valve opens up and lets the air through this pipe.
LAWRENCE: The lowest notes are wooden boxes reaching straight up.
STEIN: So it goes all the way up to the ceiling. This is one of the 32s.
LAWRENCE: Carbon fiber strings stretch 200 feet to the keyboard beside the altar. Each string opens a valve for a musical note.
STEIN: D sharp. There it is.
LAWRENCE: Stein says dust in the valves is the organ's worst enemy. On 9/11, the dust ruined the organ that had played at Trinity Church for a century. It's taken 25 years to conceive and build this new instrument with its 8,000 pipes.
STEIN: So this is a little scary, so just be very careful.
LAWRENCE: Five stories up, and we're above the ornate wooden case around the pipes - the only original part of the church still here from 1846.
STEIN: Hold on to this.
LAWRENCE: We hold on to wooden handles as we edge out to the cliff face of the organ.
LEE: Cool view you got here.
LAWRENCE: The people below look small, but their hushed voices carry all the way up here to the peak of the vaulted ceiling.
STEIN: This is the third building on this site. The first one...
LAWRENCE: Stein says this building is a New Yorker. It's seen it all.
STEIN: You look back at a 300-plus year history of this space, and there is a lot to think about, both in terms of tragedies that this place has seen, but also in terms of a rejuvenation, a rebirth. It's a very New York story in many ways.
LAWRENCE: Stein has played music for many 9/11 anniversary ceremonies, though.
STEIN: I remember for one of the anniversaries, we played at sections of the reading of the names, and that is one of the most awe-inspiring events I've ever been at. The sheer length of time that it takes to read the names of the people who died on 9/11, 2001, is not something that you are prepared for until you go through that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "REQUIEM")
UNIDENTIFIED TRINITY CHURCH ENSEMBLE: (Singing in non-English language).
LAWRENCE: This year, for the 25th anniversary, the new Trinity Church organ and ensemble performed Faure's "Requiem." As Father Michael Bird said, it's the sound of everyone's presence joined together.
BIRD: You can never forget and also have a life that is eventually healed. Healing doesn't mean forgetting.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "REQUIEM")
UNIDENTIFIED TRINITY CHURCH ENSEMBLE: (Singing in non-English language).
LAWRENCE: Quil Lawrence, NPR News, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "REQUIEM")
UNIDENTIFIED TRINITY CHURCH ENSEMBLE: (Singing in non-English language). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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