Celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary on Sunday, July 12 at 2 PM as two internationally celebrated artists come together to perform an inspiring patriotic program for ARCA’s Wurlitzer-loving audience in Lincoln Hall on the beautiful Allegheny.
World-travelled theatre organist DAVE WICKERHAM will perform arrangements from the Great American Song Book, hymns, marches, an Armed Forces salute and Stars and Stripes Forever on the newly restored McKissick Mighty Wurlitzer. He will be joined by Metropolitan Opera bass-baritone WILLIAM POWERS in medleys of George M. Cohan and Glenn Miller, the Battle Hymn of the Republic and more!
ARCA is grateful to have Dave Wickerham and William Powers bring to Lincoln Hall the acclaimed theatre organ and vocal patriotic program they have performed for Armed Forces Day at the Sanfilippo Foundation in Chicago.
This concert will sell out so be sure to make your reservations early or buy online.
Tickets are Adults $25, Members $20, Students $5.
Call to Reserve at 724-659-3153 and pay by cash or check at the door. Buy Online here. Doors open at 1:30 PM.
WILLIAM POWERS
Since making his New York City Opera debut in 1972, Chicagoan William Powers has performed over 100 operatic roles with the major opera companies in the United States, Europe, and South America. While the stylistic range of his portrayals spans the gamut from Renaissance (Monteverdi’s ORFEO for San Francisco) to Contemporary (Pasatieri’s SEAGULL for Washington DC), William Powers has earned a reputation as a “heavy” – due in large part to the dark, penetrating color of his voice – thus the portrayal of rogues and villains has dominated his career.
William Powers’ voice has been widely recorded and has been heard in hundreds of Broadcasts and two solo CDs featuring dozens of arias by the rogues and villains he has portrayed in the operatic bass repertoire. His symphonic repertoire includes Beethoven’s Ninth and Missa Solemnis; the Requiems of Verdi, Mozart, Dvorak, Brahms and Faure; and the Messiah as well as many oratorios of Handel. He has performed with the symphony orchestras of Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Dallas in the United States, as well as the symphonies of Paris, Cologne, Strasbourg, Trieste, Prague, Bratislava, Hague, Amsterdam, and Vienna.
DAVE WICKERHAM
Master of the console, Dave Wickerham was honored with the “Organist of the Year” award by the American Theatre Organ Society in 2011 and has toured the world to rave reviews, with multiple trips to Australia including a two month tour in the fall of 2025. Brought back annually by popular demand, Dave is a favorite of ARCA audiences – old and young alike – performing his unique arrangements and peerless improvisations, often with multiple combinations of genres in a single arrangement.
Dave’s programs have something for everyone – from Great American Song Book standards, Disney and popular pieces, to waltzes, rags, marches, orchestral pieces, classical works, hymns and patriotic medleys. His arrangements are always fresh, employing his improvisatorial ingenuity to create delightful surprises, sometimes with multiple combinations of genres in a single arrangement.
Dave Wickerham’s voicings are rich, fully utilizing the multitudinous ranks of the instrument and demonstrating the full range of instrumentation and the magnificent glory of the theatre organ – as he turns the Wurlitzer into a cathedral pipe organ, jazz ensemble, rag time band, bagpipes, and steam locomotive.
Dave’s outrageously genius improvisations based on audience requests given at concert intermissions are tour de force and his recordings are treasured, including his fourth CD “Sounds of Music” recorded on the famous 5 Manual, 80 Rank Theatre Organ at the Sanfilippo Residence in Barrington, IL.
From one of the preeminent theatre organists acclaimed worldwide, no one makes Lincoln Hall’s McKissick Mighty Wurlitzer Theatre organ sound more glorious or entertains our appreciative audience better than Dave Wickerham! And does he make the McKissick Mighty Wurlitzer percussion shelf ring! Here in Chattanooga Choo Choo from October 19, 2019
Dave also has delighted local students and teachers from Allegheny-Clarion Valley Schools in theatre organ educational concerts as part of ARCA’s Educational ArtReach Program in 2022 and 2025.
In December 2022, following his sold out Christmas Wurlitzer concert in Lincoln Hall, on Monday morning, December 12, students from K to 6 and band and chorus students in Jr and Sr High School from Allegheny-Clarion Valley Schools were bused to Lincoln Hall for four “Informances”.
The students were AMAZED and DELIGHTED especially by Wickerham’s demonstrations of the percussion instruments featured on a shelf at the back of the hall – snare drum, cymbals, marimba, and pitched sleigh bells.
About Dave Wickerham
Dave Wickerham was born in Encino, California in 1962. He began playing the electronic organ at the age of four and had his first pipe organ experience at age10. His musical education started at age 7.
When he moved to Arizona in 1976, he became Associate Organist at the famous Organ Stop Pizza Restaurants in Phoenix, Mesa and Tucson. While in, he continued his musical studies with Roseamond Crowley, one of the few remaining descendants of the Louis Vierne line of organists. He attended the University of Arizona in Tucson on a full scholarship, pursuing classical organ studies for six years with Dr. Roy Johnson.
In 1984, Dave moved to the Chicago area to become Staff Organist at Pipes and Pizza in Lansing, Illinois. In addition to his performance there, he concertized frequently, as well as ministering musically and serving at various churches.
August of 1990 found the Wickerham family – Dave, his wife and two young children – moving to Wisconsin, where he was one of the featured Staff Organists at the Piper Music Palace in Greenfield, a position he held for 10 years.
In the spring of 2000, Dave ushered in the new millennium with a limited special engagement, as a featured organist at “Roxy’s Pipe Organ Pizzeria”, part of a $26,000,000 expansion phase at the FIESTA Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Wickerham’s, Dave, Rhonda, and now three great kids, spent a year and a half there before returning back home to Wisconsin in August of 2001… For the next three years, Dave resumed his position at the Piper Music Palace and was also the Principal Organist at Williams Bay Lutheran Church in Lake Geneva, WI.
He enjoys concertizing frequently to many audiences including various chapters of the American Theatre Organ Society. In April of 1999, he took great pleasure being a feature artist in Melbourne, Australia for the convention of the Theatre Organ Society of Australia for which he received rave reviews. He returned “Down Under” for a six-week concert tour in Australia and New Zealand during the summer of 2003 and completed similar tours in November of 2012 and October/November of 2015.
Dave also enjoys recording and has recently “sold out” his fourth CD “Sounds of Music” recorded on the famous 5 Manual, 80 Rank Theatre Organ at the Sanfilippo Residence in Barrington, IL. There are two NEW recording projects that are soon to be completed and released.
After seven years as Organist – Curator with the legendary Milhous Collection in South Florida, Dave currently lives in Upper Michigan where he has accepted the position of Co-Manager and Organist in Residence at Crystal Theatre in Crystal Falls. This 1927 theatre is a regional Performing Arts Center and houses a 3 manual, 21 rank Moller theatre organ that Dave also looks after. Until the passing of his beloved wife Rhonda in November, 2020 she worked at his side as Co-Manager of this beautiful and historic venue.
Dave has three grown kids, two married with children of their own. So, with three grandchildren and concertizing, there have been many opportunities for travel.
About William Powers
American bass-baritone William Powers Powers, leading bass-baritone of the Metropolitan Opera, is a native of Chicago who was taught and mentored by George London and Norman Treigle and made his New York City Opera debut in 1972. He has created many new roles in first performances and revivals, many of them rogues and villains.
These include the villain Meyer Wolfsheim in Harbison’s The Great Gatsby at New York Metropolitan Opera, and roles in Penderecki’s Paradise Lost for Chicago Lyric Opera, Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights for Portland and Stewart Copeland’s Holy Blood and Crescent Moon for Cleveland. He has recorded two solo CDs for Centaur.
Since making his New York City Opera debut in 1972, Chicagoan William Powers has performed over 100 operatic roles with the major opera companies in the United States, Europe, and South America. While the stylistic range of his portrayals spans the gamut from Renaissance (Monteverdi’s ORFEO for San Francisco) to Contemporary (Pasatieri’s SEAGULL for Washington DC), William Powers has earned a reputation as a “heavy” – due in large part to the dark, penetrating color of his voice – thus the portrayal of rogues and villains has dominated his career.
Since making his New York City Opera debut in 1972, Chicagoan William Powers has performed over 100 operatic roles with the major opera companies in the United States, Europe, and South America. While the stylistic range of his portrayals spans the gamut from Renaissance (Monteverdi’s ORFEO for San Francisco) to Contemporary (Pasatieri’s SEAGULL for Washington DC), William Powers has earned a reputation as a “heavy” – due in large part to the dark, penetrating color of his voice – thus the portrayal of rogues and villains has dominated his career.
Does William Powers feel bad about the label of “evil” that has been hung upon him? Not at all! As a matter of fact, he delights in it! It is not often that a person can act “as bad as he wants to be” and get away with it!
The McKissick Mighty Wurlitzer
The Mighty McKissick Wurlitzer organ in Lincoln Hall is one of the best examples of this class of theatre organ. ARCA’s Wurlitzer contains seventeen ranks of pipes and is characterized by a balanced blend of unmistakeable Wurlitzer ‘sounds”. Built in 1928 at the Wurlitzer Organ factory in North Tonawanda outside of Buffalo and numbered OPUS 1989, the organ originally was installed in Cleveland’s Uptown Theatre. It was played for several years accompanying silent movies. With the end of the silent film era it was subsequently purchased by Richard Wheeler, a Cleveland organist, and remained in his home until Wheeler passed. Paul McKissick purchased it from the Haynes Company in North Canton, Ohio, where it had been in storage.
Paul lovingly and painstakingly rebuilt the instrument over eleven years and in 1999 the restored Wulrtlizer was installed in McKissick’s garage at their home in Lake Latonka near Mercer, PA. The organ became known as the Latona Pipes, and was played in annual benefits concerts to raise money for the DeBence Museum in Franklin. Dr. Arthur and Patricia Steffee attended one of the concerts. When Paul decided to downsize and was seeking a place for the Wurtlizer for the next generation, Dr. Arthur and Patricia Steffee, ARCA’s founders, purchased it to enhance the newly restored Lincoln Hall, on the second floor of the Foxburg Free Library.
Its seventeen ranks of pipes translate to 60 notes per voice or rank, more than 1200 pipes and 6,000 moving parts to make the Wurlitzer sound. Only the relay and computer are not authentic or vintage parts on the organ. The installation included one of Wurlitzer’s most unique features, the decorative ‘Toy Shelf’ of miniature instruments, which are displayed in a rear balcony in Lincoln Hall and are all powered by the organ. The marimba was added and all the associated drums, cymbals, bells and automatic piano produce a balanced blend of unmistakable Mighty Wurlitzer sounds.
ARCA audiences have enjoyed thirteen years of glorious music making on the McKissick Mighty Wurlitzer by some of the worlds greatest theatre organists – including David Wickerham, Jonas Nordwall, Clark Wilson, Brent Valliant, Martin Ellis, Walt Strony, Scott Foppiano, Donna Parker, Jelani Eddington and Ken Double. Jason Wiles is ARCA’s organ technician, maintaining and tuning the organ for each concert.
With thanks to all the generous donors whose gifts underwrote the year long Wurlitzer Restoration Project begun in May of 2024, ARCA’s organ technician Jason Wiles has returned the McKissick Mighty Wurlitzer to its full “Might” and made “Our Pipe Dreams Come True”.
With the Grand Debut Concert on June 1 concert performed by Dave Wickerham, the glory of the instrument has been renewed, guaranteeing that it be playing music beyond our lifetimes – so future audiences of all ages may be inspired by the glorious sounds of an ‘orchestra of pipes’ – of winds and brass and strings – and snare drum, cymbals and chimes.
It has ensured that the McKissick Mighty Wurlitzer will continue to enchant listeners with this treasured American form of musical performance and the timeless melodies from the Great American Songbook, movies and Broadway musicals in generations to come.
