Hooray for Hollywood

FINDLAY — Jim Mace spends his days in the world of computers, but it's playing music on the organ that takes up much of his free time. The Findlay native will share his musical talents with a free concert titled "The Music of Hollywood." Performances will be held at 2 p.m. on May 16 and repeated May 17 at St. Paul's Church, 218 E. Sandusky St. Selections will feature music by composer John Williams and Disney, and the movies "Interstellar," "Lord of the Rings" and "Pirates of the Caribbean." "My goal was, part of it just as a personal challenge, was to make the concert professional grade both in the quality of the music, the duration, all aspects of it," he said. "And also, aside from the challenge and enjoyment of doing that, to make something like that available to the community, to people that may not have a lot of opportunities to go hear something like this." A Findlay native, Mace took piano lessons from teacher Joan Benedict growing up. He later took on the organ. "There was a learning curve," he noted. "The pedals, getting your feet moving because you can't take the time to look down and see what's going on. That was probably the hardest part of it. Then just all the different sounds that you can draw from. How you want to mix and match to go with the song that you're playing." He graduated from Bowling Green State University, where he majored in Information Technology. He also has a Management Information Systems degree. "The music was just kind of a side thing, a hobby," he said. Mace said Carolyn Shafer, the former organist at St. Paul's, served over 50 years before retiring. "As she approached retirement, I thought, well, I know the piano. I'd better learn the organ enough to fill in until we find the real organist. And 25 years later, we're still looking for the real organist," he laughed. Mace and Emily Thomas now share the duties of organist at the church. Until about 25 years ago, the church had a small pipe organ. Mace said it was due for a major overhaul. "The thing had to be torn completely down, and then refurbished and reassembled," he said. The cost was phenomenal, he said, adding that it comes with the territory of pipe organs. St. Paul's started looking at alternatives and found the Phoenix Organ Co., near Toronto, Canada. For a lower cost, they would ultimately end up with a better computerized instrument that was constructed in 2005. A fire in 2014 left some residual smoke damage inside the organ. The company was called back and over the past year rebuilt the internal components and replaced the amplifiers and sound cards. "And we took that opportunity to upgrade it to their latest version of software," said Mace. "It looks like a pipe organ. It sounds like a pipe organ. And if you take the back of it off, what you're going to see is basically a big computer and sound system." All of the speakers are hidden behind the pipes which are still there but don't play any longer. The Phoenix PD-350 features 216 stops over four voices including American, German, French and orchestral. There are also five divisions with full string, reed, flute, principal and celeste choruses. This will be Mace's first concert. "People have talked to me for years about doing a concert. I've thought about doing one on and off but never really found something that I thought would be interesting," he explained. Then he ran across YouTube videos by Anna Lapwood, who has become famous for playing movie music on the organ in England. "It just kind of clicked. That might be fun," said Mace. "So I started looking for arrangements of music and eventually built up what I thought was enough for a full program." He's been working on the program since October and on average practices two hours a day, six days a week. "I had to cut out some TV watching and other stuff to make it work because I've still got the day job, but it's been a fun experience," he said. Mace said he's tried to bring together a variety of music for the program. "I mean, movies over 100 years, there's so many different genres and also songs that would showcase all the different capabilities of the organ," he said. "We've got a wonderful instrument. Our congregants have really stepped up to support the music program, and I wanted to really show what the organ could do." Different medleys will be performed at the beginning featuring Williams' classics from the 1980s and 90s such as Superman, Indiana Jones and Star Wars. There's will also be Walt Disney tunes including the Jungle Book, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and the Little Mermaid. Following intermission, he will perform longer pieces from individual movies. This is family-friendly music that people should be familiar with, added Mace. He will try to include some audience participation along the way.