Thunder Bay Centre

Thunder Bay is the most populous municipality in Northwestern Ontario, and the second most populous in Northern Ontario after Greater Sudbury. The city takes its name from the immense bay at the head of Lake Superior. The city is often referred to as the Lakehead or Canadian Lakehead because of its location at the end of the Great Lakes navigation. Though a somewhat isolated community, the RCCO Centre consists of 12 dedicated musicians and organ aficionados. We devote ourselves to getting young people to discover the pipe organ by providing scholarships to those with piano background and putting on organ concerts to show off the instruments in the area.

There are 10 pipe organs in Thunder Bay and district including one tracker and one movable organ at Lakehead University. Some churches are using keyboards or pianos, and unfortunately not making music on their beautiful pipe organs.  Our mission at the RCCO here is to keep the pipe organs sounding!  Part of our efforts are directed towards our Scholarships offered by application and audition each fall for ten FREE organ lessons. We offer up to four scholarships and each candidate is judged on their own merit as students of piano are at many different levels of expertise.   If you are a member of the public reading this, you should know that this largest of instruments, the pipe organ, is in churches because they are generally the largest buildings about.  This however does not mean that all the organ literature is church oriented and probably about 80% is secular music.   Should you be a younger person reading this, you need to know that as an organist you will be able to play higher than any instrument, lower than any instrument and make more noise than any instrument…(including amplified rock bands).  And we do it all with just air!   In addition, being an organist is a great way to make some extra money!

Another objective of our RCCO Centre is to provide members of the public with enjoyable concerts featuring the pipe organ.  If we can't find a recitalist, we put on concerts ourselves! 

You don't have to be an organist to belong to our Centre and anyone with an interest in choral music or organ music is most welcome.  We welcome student groups from schools or anyone who would like to try their piano music out on the organ.

For more information about us, please contact the Centre’s Past President, Nancy Wallace-Nock at nwallace@shaw.ca, or any other member.

Centre Executive:

Sandra Cosbey (President)
Kathy Kroff-Fisher (Vice-President)
Rebecca Gillies (2nd Vice-President)
Janet Pike (Secretary-Treasurer)