Spreckels Organ Society

It’s only good for your 2020 taxes — an income tax deduction for your charitable donations (via cash, check, credit card). Even if you don’t itemize your taxes, you can claim the deduction for up to $300 when you give to non-profit charitable organizations (such as the 501-C-3 designated Spreckels Organ Society). CLICK HERE to read the good news at the IRS website.

Here’s your invitation to join a worldwide tribe of music-lovers who want the Spreckels Organ to keep playing for audiences now and in the future.

Click here to donate and to learn more about membership.

Your donations count toward your membership in the Spreckels Organ Society, a non-profit charity founded in 1988 to preserve, program and promote the Spreckels Organ as a world treasure for all people.

Your membership supports the concerts, and also scholarships for organ students in the San Diego area. In 2021 we hope to re-launch the live concerts that audiences enjoy while seated outdoors in the heart of San Diego’s Balboa Park.

For 2021, we are at work forming a library from thousands of organ sheet music selections that we have gathered through the years – an excellent resource for musicians.

We plan further educational presentations too, as a way to augment the frequent visits that local 5th graders have been making to the Spreckels Organ for many years. Soon, we hope that they’ll be able to enjoy an online visit to the Pavilion as well, and learn more about the organ’s music and the science that supports the art.

It’s our hope that in 2021 we shall offer another summer of Monday evening concerts, continuing a 30-year tradition of the International Summer Organ Festival with the world’s finest organists coming to offer full-length concerts under summer evening skies.

Your membership helps make it possible! CLICK HERE to renew your membership, give one as a holiday gift, or join today — and let the spirit of music continue its gifts to all.

In the 1920s and early 30s — before the Christmas music of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, or Vince Guaraldi — it was a holiday tradition for world-famous mezzo-soprano Ernestine Schumann-Heink to sing Silent Night on the radio. Click the photo for the recording.

She recorded Stille Nacht for Victor Records in 1908 at their Camden, New Jersey, studio when she was a star on the world opera stage.

Click here to hear a recording of her in a duet with with Enrico Caruso from Il Trovatore. Later, after she came to live in San Diego, the annual radio appearance helped to keep her in the spotlight.

She was a “Gold Star Mother – and a Star of the World,” according to the plaque placed in her memory at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion shortly after her death in 1936 at the age of 75.