The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 43

I I Dining Out E7 What's On EI 2 GAZETTE. ALLEN MclNNIS if. 1 6,911 pipes. Arian Sunnarborg among some of organ's Church pulls out stops for new organ Replace or renovate: it is a dilemma all churches face now and then. Sometimes the problem is a crumbling belfry, sometimes a pallid preacher.

Often it is an organ that has fallen gradually out of repair and out of fashion. The Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul on Sher-brooke St. has chosen to renovate its Casavant colossus of 1930 a decision that might seem typical of Presbyterian thrift and caution.

1 But this makeover, by thfcSt. Leonard firm of Carbn, Gagnon, Baumgarten, cost slightly under $400,000, a sum that bought a new organ not too long ago. Among the improvements is a multilevel capture system, which adds digital conveniences to the venerable instrument, as well as a distinctly anachronistic LED display. Many I 1 -4 ll IN THE yf- is pipes nave uccn ii.piai.cu, anu an uic Tl others have been cleaned and re- PAT DONNELLY THE GAZETTE ARTHUR voiced. A measure of how seriously this renovation is taken is the engagement of the noted British organist Simon Preston to give an inaugural recital tomorrow evening.

KAPTAINIS MUSIC LAS VEGAS "It's a very simple deal," explained Jean David, vice-president of marketing and communications for the Cirque du Soleil. He was talking about the newly forged relationship between the Cirque and the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The Cirque's Nouvelle Experience show opened this week at the Mirage for a yearlong run. Next year, a new Cirque show will open in another Mirage hotel, The Treasure Island, being built down the street. In it, the Cirque will have its own, specially designed, theatre.

Leaning back into the sofa in the VIP lounge of Cirque headquarters (one of several trailers parked next to the big top out behind the Mirage), David made the Vegas deal sound as straightforward as a candy swap in a school yard. (Or, dare we say, selling your soul to the devil.) "The Mirage is making an investment from its side and we're making an investment from our side," he continued. "They invested in the hardware. The big top is Mirage property. They also pay all the operational costs of the big top and the advertising.

From our side, our investment is in the show." According to David, the Cirque was almost rendered unto Caesars. Negotiations with Caesar's Palace (a gloriously decadent complex of casinos, fine dining and haute couture shopping) had been under way for several years, but fell through at point of signing. When the word got around Vegas that the Cirque was no longer under the yoke of the Roman Empire, the phones began to ring. PLEASE SEE CIRQUE, PAGE E8 Six-figure organ repair bills do not always meet with the approval of churchgoers, some of whom usually think the money might be better spent, if spent at all. A few at A have blanched at the price, but there was a consensus that something had to be done.

"The organ was becoming unreliable," said Donald Wilkie, chairman of the church's worship and music committee. "Mechanical parts were wearing out, and the cost (of frequent minor repairs) was prohibitive because these parts aren't made any more." "Over time the metal deadens and the pipes move," added Yves Caron, one of the project supervisors. "The pipes do not sound as well as when they were first voiced. When you touch the key, you may feel the sound arrives a fraction of second later." To rebuild, however, runs contrary to contemporary thinking, which favors the construction of new organs according to baroque principles a paradoxical formula. Such instruments are furnished with tracker action, a series of rods connecting the keys and stops to valves and sliding panels.

These obstruct pipes or leave them open; when a pipe is open, wind enters it to create a sound. Billed as Montreal's largest Curiously, this Rube Goldberg system was scrapped around the turn of the century in favor of electro-pneumatic connections between the console and pipes that permitted the organist both to sit at a comfortable distance from the pipe casing and effect vast changes of sonority by pushing one piston rather than pulling the mushroom-like draw knobs to the left and right of the keys. Stops in turn proliferated, and huge, opulent organs designed to imitate orchestras became the vogue. With this grandeur, however, came opacity, later heard as blandness as the organs aged and historical dogma became ascendant. The horse-and-buggy tracker design was suddenly state of the art, and Casavant electro-pneumatic instruments built in the first half of the century became passe Even Casavant hired the Europeans Karl Wilhelm and Hellmuth Wolff to build tracker organs.

The old instruments still have their adherents, however, and the A model can rightly be called a classic. With 98 stops, four manuals, 1 12 ranks and 6,91 1 pipes, it is billed by the church as the largest organ in Montreal. Cirque du Soleil clown David Lebel. L' WVO 4 -V if if Happier with a familiar sound (For those scoring at home, the Von Beckerath tracker instrument of St. Joseph's Oratory has five manuals and 120 ranks, but 78 stops and 5,800 pipes.

The 1890 Casavant in Notre Dame Basilica has 83 stops and more than 6,000 pipes. These instruments are integrated units, while the A specifications are divided between the main organ in the chancel and the tower organ in the nave.) And regardless of its size, the A instrument was the one to which church members had grown accustomed. "We felt that the congregation was used to the sound of a Romantic organ," said Wilkie, "and that they would probably be happier with the sound they were used to." Although this organ was never less than adequate as an aid to congregational singing, it will now answer more of the demands of solo playing and accompaniment. Among new stops expected to add brilliance and definition is the Fourniture IV; the eight-foot trumpet stop will speak more brightly. A trumpet rank projecting horizontally above the communion table will make a visual as well as acoustic impact.

The so-called multi-level capture system makes it possible to encode 256 combinations of stops in a digital memory bank, easily retrieved by the organist. PLEASE SEE ORGAN, PAGE E14 Ml Clowns galore: part of Cirque du Soleil's Nouvelle Experience troupe performing in Las Vegas. At 67, Rod Steiger is a survivor His vehicle was, of course, In the Heat of the Night. "That line, by the way, was an ad-lib, beams Steiger, 67, who seems to be wearing one of Rocky Balboa's old hats. Steiger is in town to shoot the psycho-thriller The Neighbor, also starring Linda (Crocodile Dundee) Kos-lowski and Ron formance in The Pawnbroker, Steiger responds: "Yeah, I thought I was robbed, too.

That was the performance of my life. But then again, that's probably why they gave me the Oscar two years later for In the Heat of the Night guilt! "Still, I learned a lesson that night. I was too cocky. I figured because The Pawnbroker was the only drama nominated I'd win the Oscar," recalls the New Jersey native, a veteran of more than 50 movies. "I started to fantasize in my seat.

Should I walk down the aisle when my name was announced? Should I run? What should I say during my speech? "Just before they announced the winner, I was almost out of my seat "We have the motive which is money," snarls the portly fellow in the chair, looking every bit the gruff, cracker Southern sheriff. "And we have the body which is dead!" After this deft analysis, the fellow in the chair says nothing. His laserlike eyes simply pierce large holes through his sweating suspect, sitting a metre away. Fortunately, the setting is not some hayseed Southern town. And the chunky fellow in the chair is not some sinister sheriff.

All of which comes as tremendous relief to his sweating suspect me who is ready to confess to any crime. But such is the acting power of. Rod Steiger who's on all the time, even when the cameras aren't rolling. On another film set, in South Shore Boucherville, 25 years later, Steiger, is convincingly reprising the one and only role that brought him to the Oscar podium. BILL BROWNSTEIN New kid on the block A new television station goes on the air this month, but most Montrealers won't see it for a tew months, Gazette TV critic Mike Boone reports.

PAGE E2 Hollywood's double standard Why is it that movies abound in which women are either scantily clad or wearing nothing at all, yet men are rarely shown with more than their shirt removed? PAGE E3 Lea. Steiger plays a demented doctor in the flick, but he's not at all averse to discussing past, Oscar-nominated performances in On the Waterfront (1954) and The Pawnbroker (1965). Nor does he display any false modesty. When told he was robbed of an Oscar for his compelling per- iHwii.iMilli.ii I MHUMi PLEASE SEE ROD STEIGER, PAGE E5 Oscar-winner Rod Steiger is in town to make a movie..