Verizon Hall Organ Demonstration

Each month CarSense highlights some of the best attractions in the region in a feature called "Sunday Drives".

Saturday, February 8

Can’t get the kids to sit still for a Kimmel Center concert? OK, how about you try a tour instead, starting with a 15-minute demonstration of the enormous Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ in the Center’s 2,500-seat Verizon Hall?

The Cooper Organ is the largest mechanical pipe organ in the United States, with nearly 7,000 pipes that range from the size of a drinking straw to giants two feet square by 32 feet high. Demonstrations only happen about once a month, where a short organ demonstration is given at the beginning of the standard one-hour Kimmel Center tour. Tours are free and first-come, first-served; they depart at 1 pm from the Information Desk in Commonwealth Plaza. (There’s also an Art and Architecture Tour at 10:30 am one Saturday a month – call 215-790-5886 for more information.)

If it turns out you really have an organ enthusiast, mark down June 20, which the annual Organ Day – a six-hour free festival where kids are allowed to actually try the organ out, and musicians from the American Guild of Organists, Pennsylvania Ballet and Opera Philadelphia show what it can really do. There’s even a silent film with organ accompaniment.

https://www.kimmelcenter.org/events-and-tickets/201920/free/organ-demonstration-february/

Kimmel Center

300 South Broad Street

Philadelphia, PA 19102

215-790-5886