Organ and Brass Concierto in Wallace

WALLACE — Hauntingly beautiful music filled the Prayer Station at the centuries-old Wallace United Methodist Church during the "Organ and Brass Concierto" earlier this month.

The concert featured two musicians, Kyle Fuxa, playing the two-rank tracker action pipe organ, and Sam Morozov, performing with Brass. The concert was free to the public, but also acted as a fundraiser for the Wallace Food Bank, as concert-goers could donate cash or food.

Organ and Brass featured the classical musical stylings of Bach, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Mozart, as the musicians played between the century-old organ and brass instruments, bringing the music to life in the crowded prayer station.

Morozov brought five different instruments, including the trumpet, cornet and flugelhorn, educating the audience about them before he played.

"The cornet became the second place to the trumpet, although they are very similar instruments, one does a job that the other cannot," Morozov explained before playing 'Neapolitan Danse' from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky.

There are different theories behind the reason behind the trumpet becoming more popular, with some thinking that musician Louis Armstrong significantly influenced the trumpet's popularity and the cornet's loss of stature.

Morozov is a third-year mechanical engineering major at Gonzaga University and has played the trumpet for 10 years while collecting, researching and repairing different instruments as a brass technician at Clearwater Music. Fuxa is a first-year graduate student studying organ performance at the University of Montana, serving as the organist and pianist for Plymouth Congregational Church in Spokane.

The event was created and organized by Alex Cook and hosted by Art and Doris Fleming, the spiritual leaders of the Methodist Church.

The Methodist Church was built in 1900, adding the north wing of the church in 1908 to house the two-rank tracker action pipe organ. The organ was built by Vogelpohl and Speath and is the oldest tracker-action pipe organ in its current condition and original home in the Pacific Northwest.