4 | MAY 20 - 26, 2021 | WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
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Worcester church organist Wesley Hall fi nds unlikely TikTok fame Richard Duckett Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
“It’s time to go inside a pipe organ,” says Wesley Hall in one of his TikTok videos. What’s inside might be quite a revelation for many viewers over the next 60 seconds. While you may see the console, keyboards, pedals and some pipes sitting in the audience, opening an organ up reveals another world. As Hall shows, you can actually step inside and then descend. “Pipes, ladders, winding systems, random crap, here are my car keys inside a pipe.” Descending farther, “electric stuff , more pipes …” says Hall, or @westpiper, to give him his proper TikTok handle. There’s an invitation to follow him back up the ladder, and keep following. Which is what thousands of people have been doing since Hall, minister of music and the arts at First Baptist Church of Worcester, 111 Park Ave., started posting videos on TikTok last year mostly featuring diff erent aspects of the pipe organ. As an organist and keyboardist, Hall, who grew up in East Brookfi eld and Spencer, has given solo concerts throughout the United States and Europe. He is a graduate of the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music, and holds an artist diploma and a master’s degree in historical performance from the Oberlin Conservatory. But with all that work, performance and concertizing over the years, nothing has reached people quite like one of his TikTok videos, Hall said. That they are not only necessarily brisk at the TikTok max of 60 seconds but also delivered with a sense of humor doesn’t hurt viewership. One video has had more than 340,000 views so far, Hall said.
Organist Wesley Hall inside the the pipe organ at First Baptist Church. RICK CINCLAIR/TELEGRAM & GAZETTE
“This is new ground for me. One particular day I made a video, went out on some errands, and there were 30,000 views in that short a time.” A video showing the basics of an organ consul such as what the stops actually are attracted 100,000 views, also in a short period.
“I had been able to show more people what I do in one afternoon than I had my entire life, and it really took my breath away,” Hall said. TikTok has become very popular worldwide since the video-sharing social networking service debuted in 2016. The platform sees thousands of people
making a variety of short-form videos from 15 seconds to one minute, the most time currently allowed. Hall went to Lübeck, Germany, in January 2020 for some further organ studies. He was following in the footsteps of See ORGANIST, Page 5D
