St Ann’s Bay Methodist Church seeks $9m to replace pipe organ lost in 2018 fire

The St Ann’s Bay Methodist Church is seeking to raise $9 million to purchase a pipe organ to replace the one destroyed in a February 2018 fire.

The fire, in the early hours of Monday, February 19, destroyed the instrument, which was more than 100 years old at the time, along with everything inside the main church building, sparing only the office and the church hall.

The St Ann’s Bay Methodist Church opened its doors on August 1, 1838 and was previously rebuilt after being destroyed by fire in 1898. After the latest fire, work to restore the building once more began in late 2019.

The effort to acquire a pipe organ is aimed at restoring the church to its original musical glory, with the pipe organ the preferred choice for traditional churches such as the Methodist, Anglican, Catholic and Baptist.

While later denominations go for the electronic organ or the piano, the pipe organ is considered to deliver a better sound than the digital organ.

Speaking after the 2018 fire, head of the Methodist church in Jamaica at the time, Bishop Everald Galbraith, said hardly anything could make up for the loss of the pipe organ.

“We have to buy a new one,” Galbraith said in’acknowledging’the destruction of the instrument. “It was a beautiful organ. Only recently, somebody came here and played it, and we didn’t even realise that there was so much beauty still in that organ; excellent organ.”

Speaking to The Gleaner recently, church member Cynthia Graham said this effort is to begin.

“We have decided that we are going to launch a programme to replace the 106-year-old organ that was burnt in the fire,” she acknowledged. “It’s a Murphy organ, it’s American and it’s for $9 million. The one from England would have been much more.”

Graham said persons who might want to contribute to the fundraising effort could reach out to the church by calling the office in St Ann’s Bay at (876) 972-1074.

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