PEOPLE PROFILE: Young organist has faith in his abilities

By Neale Gulley, gulleyn@gnnewspaper.com

Attend Mass at Corpus Christi church in the heart of Buffalo and you’re bound to be moved by the place, its architecture and its acoustics.

During Sunday’s 11:30 Mass, one of North Tonawanda’s most talented young musicians took the helm of one of the finest all-around pipe organs in the region to make sure the music was as close to heavenly as possible.

Daniel Pisarcik, 14, commanded the church’s massive three keyboard, 32-pipe-set instrument for worshippers in the same house where it was built about 70 years ago, by Polish maker A. Radziewicz of New Jersey.

It is said workers at the time assembled the pieces in a building next door, eventually completing the installation of all 2,014 individual pipes (ranging in size from a half inch to 20 feet) in two separate chestnut wood housings on the church’s upper balcony.

Pisarcik’s teacher, Bruce Woody, said despite the rare quality of the instrument and fine acoustics of the building, it was his student’s solid playing ability which kept parishioners lingering in the aisles until the very last note of his closing rendition of “Go Tell it on the Mountain.”

“It’s coming from him,” said Woody, who has served as the church’s organist for about two years and before that as director of music for 18 years at what is now St. Jude the Apostle in North Tonawanda. “You could play a beautiful instrument poorly. He just sits there and you can tell he loves what he’s doing. He has a very sound understanding ...”

Woody also was organist for eight years at the now closed Ascension Roman Catholic Church in North Tonawanda. He has been the house organist at the historic Riviera Theatre on Webster Street for 10 years.

“If you can’t believe what Daniel does at church playing the organ, you’ll never believe what he does at the Riv,” he said of his student, also one of the theater’s organists, whose church performance Sunday was due to his third straight year winning the Buffalo Dioceses’ Monsignor Kawalec Young Organist Scholarship. The scholarship was $500 for the past two years Pisarcik won, and this year it was $250. He is one of two recipients this year.

Now a first year at Niagara Wheatfield, he said he started playing when he was just 9 years old, on a smaller electronic organ in his family’s home. Since then he has also picked up the trumpet and piano, each of which he plays in school bands, with the keyboard set aside for jazz. His first teacher on the organ was a neighbor, one Joan Mistrella, with whom he still studies.

Of the performance Sunday, he said: “I feel ... it just makes me happy that I can perform in front of others who enjoy the music. I guess that’s it.”

The lifelong North Tonawanda native’s competence with church music, where there are rules not meant to be broken, is just one of his interests.

“The theater,” he said, is the work which is just plain fun. “You can do different stuff in the theater and you can be more creative. You can add your own style.”

He will travel to the upcoming New York state fair in Syracuse as he and Woody have done for several years, to play organ music for the crowd. Woody said fairgoers enjoy watching the young man play as proficiently as he does.

The A. Radziewicz organ, one of the only such instruments by a Polish maker in the area, was refurbished in 1966 by Po-Chedley & Son of the Tonawandas. In the 1970s, a 16-foot trombone pipe was salvaged from nearby St. Ann’s church, an equally impressive and grand place which had used what Woody indicated was an impressive Johnson pipe organ before it was dismantled.

The church itself, founded in 1898, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It sits at 199 Clark St., just a stone’s throw from Broadway with its famous market, in an area which over the years has represented some of the best culture the city has to offer as well as some of the worst crime.

Inside the grand red stone “cathedral” with its prominent clock towers and enormous stained glass windows, a sincere, old-world-style service is held amid towering hand-carved columns and balloon ceilings covered in biblical painting.

The church’s pastor, The Rev. Anzelm Chalupka, took time from the altar near the end of Mass to point out Pisarcik’s abilities after several well executed preludes, pieces from Handel’s “Water Music” and several standard Christmas carols set to coincide with the service. Through his thick accent he said:

“It is a great honor to be fourteen and play so well ...”

Contact reporter Neale Gulleyat 693-1000, ext. 114.