By Christie Bender
Grand Rapids Public Museum
The Grand Rapids Public Museum (GRPM) announced the 2019 Mighty Wurlitzer Organ Concert series, beginning Oct. 18 and 19 with a special Halloween-themed Mighty Wurlitzer Organ Concert by Dale Zieger to the 1920 silent film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In the silent film, viewers will meet Dr. Henry Jekyll, his fiancé Millicent and her father. Upon the challenge of there being two types of self, good and evil, Dr. Jekyll experiments with scientific means to reveal the hidden, dark side of man, in turn releasing a murderer within himself.
Dale Zieger will be accompanying the silent film on the GRPM’s 1928 Mighty Wurlitzer Theater Organ. Zieger was born in St. Louis, Missouri and has been playing music from a young age. He began piano lessons at five years old, and organ lessons at ten years old, and he played the Fox Organ for the first time age ten in 1955. At age sixteen he began playing the organ professionally, and became Stan’s Assistant organist at the St. Louis Fox Theater at age eighteen, a position that continued for six years. Zieger was a music major at Webster College and Washington University in St. Louis, and in 1970 he joined Conn Organ Corp. as Concert Artist, Product Specialist and Organ Designer. Zieger has traveled internationally for Conn in Europe, South America, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, and Canada. He is currently co-owner of “Dale and Gail’s Music and Art Gallery” with his wife Gail in the 1927 Hart Theater in Hart, Michigan. There, they perform organ and piano programs along with silent movies with live theater organ accompaniment. He is now in his 55th year of professional organ performance.
Shows will be held at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 18, and at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 19, in the GRPM’s Meijer Theater.
Tickets for individual concerts are $8 for Museum member adults, $4 for Museum member children, $10 for non-member adults and $5 for non-member children. Tickets are available by visiting www.grpm.org/Organ or by calling 616-929-1700.
The second concert of the series will feature Andrew Rogers playing Classic Melodies including Cinderella’s Waltz, Chicago, Bye Bye Blues, The Carousel Waltz and more on Friday, Nov. 22, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Nov. 23, at 2 p.m.
The third and final artists in the 2019 series will be Dave Wickerham performing a collection of Christmas and seasonal favorites in his concerts Holiday Classics on Friday, Dec. 20, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Dec. 21, at 2 p.m.
