Zion United Church. Photo Ed Halverson

Zion United Church in Liverpool has another potential buyer.

Stephanie Sereda hopes to transform the church into a year-round makers market and event space.

Sereda and her husband moved from Ontario to make Western Head their home in the fall.

She says the opportunity to take a decommissioned church into a community and cultural space is a dream come true.

“A big part of it was also things we would do for the community,” said Sereda. “Because I’m an events planner by nature I like to create opportunities for people to connect and engage.”

Sereda sees the church as a place where anything is possible.

“I think the part that appeals to me the most is it’s a flagship building in our community. It’s been around since the 1800s, it tells a story and I’d like to preserve as much of that story as possible in what we’re going to do with it.”

Sereda joins Xaver Varnus as the two potential suiters looking at the church, at this point.

Varnus wishes to move the pipe organ from Varnus Hall in Brooklyn, established in the former Pilgrim United Church, to the Zion United Church.

Moving the venue would allow him to increase capacity to 300 audience members.

The Zion United Church will be listed this week and all offers will be reviewed by the closure working group headed up by Ray Baker.

Baker says the working group will then present the offers to the congregation to vote on who will get to purchase the church.

“It’s not necessarily the offer that comes in with the greatest monetary value,” said Baker. “That is an important factor but more important is also what the future use of the church would be. We’d like it to continue to be an area where we support the community.”

Baker is pleased both expressions of interest in the church are community focussed, but says any recommendation made by the congregation about the sale will need to be approved by Regional Council 15 of the United Church in Halifax.

“If we have a good offer financially, and a good reason for selecting a particular buyer I’m pretty confident that they will approve it.”

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Xaver Varnus and his newly installed pipe organ. Photo contributed by Xaver Varnus.

A musician bringing Bach to his venue in Brooklyn is hoping the public will help repair the building.

Organist Xaver Varnus bought the former pilgrim church in Brooklyn last year to transform it into a live music venue.

He has already installed a pipe organ and has now set his sights on restoring the exterior to its former glory.

Varnus has been gathering pictures from the early 1900s showing the church clad with brown brick instead of the white vinyl siding it has today.

“I really don’t understand why this fashion came in the 60s and 70s to cover most of the Nova Scotian churches with this, kind of, white condom but it’s terrible. Maybe it’s very good against the weather but it’s terrible for the look,” said Varnus.

However, before the siding can be replaced, there are some structural issues to contend with as time has caused the walls to go out of alignment.

The pandemic has cut into his plans for performances so he has turned to a GoFundMe page to help get the work done.

To date, he has raised over $6,000 of his $48,000 goal.

Varnus credits his popularity on YouTube for the number of donations he is receiving from around the world.

“I get donations from everywhere, from New Zealand, from Japan, from Korea, everywhere,” said Varnus. “And now I can realize how many people are listening to the YouTube recordings because the people are mostly reacting because of the YouTube Videos.”

Videos of Varnus playing some of the world’s most famous pipe organs have been viewed more than 15 million times.

The organ master has more grand plans for the former church including installing a clock in the tower, something that was not part of the original design.

Varnus says the work he has done on the newly christened Varnus Concert Hall is not going unnoticed by the classical music world’s elite.

“One of the most famous string quartet of Europe at this time is the Kelemen Quartet and they are coming to Carnegie Hall, to New York, at the end of August,” said Varnus. “They just called me two weeks ago and they said after the Carnegie Hall concert they are coming to visit me in Nova Scotia for a week and they want to play two concerts here in my church.”

Depending on what COVID restrictions are in place, Varnus is planning to hold a concert on March 21. Besides being the start of spring, the date is significant for him.

“I always play the great concert on the twenty-first of March because that is the birthday of Bach,” said Varnus.

He understands it can be difficult for someone who hasn’t been raised on classical music to find it accessible. But that’s a perception he hopes to change.

“Maybe I can take a little part of, for local people to opening the gate of the beautiful country of classical music for them.”

Reported by Ed Halverson 
E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

To listen to the broadcast of this story, press play below.

Xaver Varnus and his newly installed pipe organ. Photo contributed by Xaver Varnus.

World-renowned organist Xaver Varnus plans to host a series of mini-concerts during the holidays at the former Pilgram Church.

Varnus bought the church earlier this year and installed a pipe organ shortly afterwards.

He’s made many friends of the neighbours who would stop in to check on his progress.

“In Toronto, in one year, I met only one of my neighbours,” said Varnus. “Since I’m here, I don’t know how big is the population of Brooklyn, perhaps one thousand, I think I already met 999.”

Initially, Varnus had hoped to mount a concert in his church to repay the warm welcome he has received.

Because of COVID-19, he needed to rework his plan. Instead of one gathering of over a hundred people, he will host five nights of organ music for up to 20 people at a time.

“I don’t want to play a very long concert. Maybe 30 minutes or 35 minutes and then after, maybe we have some chat outside the church,” said Varnus.

The program will feature selections from Bach, a personal favourite of Varnus since he was a five year-old child.

In fact, he calls Bach, “his first language.”

“It’s very easy to understand Bach for the twentieth century because, like Shakespeare, of course, one-third of his work was made for his own age but the other two-thirds is general for all over the ages and people.”

Varnus says some of the people who stop in to visit have had little experience with classical music prior to his arrival in the community.

He’s touched to see them embrace the genre so fully as evidenced by a performance by a visiting musician friend.

“This very nice lady was sitting in the first bench next to the piano and during Walter’s wonderful performance of Brahms, she was crying. I thought, this is the first touch, when classical music was touching this lady’s heart.”

Varnus is already making plans for a larger performance in the fall of 2021. Several of the top figures in classical music from around the world have committed to perform in his Brooklyn Church, now rechristened ‘Varnus Hall’ at a festival in September.

“I want to give some hope to people that after COVID we still have light, we still have sunshine, we still have Debussy and Bach and we still have big red apples, so everything, you know?”

Varnus will play his mini-concert series at 5:00pm each evening from December 26 – 30. Admission is free but a donation towards his 2021 festival and ongoing renovations is appreciated.

Unfortunately, if you haven’t secured a seat, you’re out of luck. The concerts were announced Thursday and by Friday, all performances have been filled.

Reported by Ed Halverson 
E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

Xaver Varnus looks on as his pipe organ is taken apart before transport. Photo credit: Xaver Varnus

One of the most renowned pipe organ players in the world is making his home in Queens because of a mosquito bite.

Xaver Varnus was searching online for a church to buy when a mosquito bit his hand.

While swatting it, he moved the cursor away from the Ontario map he had been looking at and had the good fortune to land in Brooklyn, Nova Scotia.

“And I just realized that in Nova Scotia, there’s a huge beautiful, building, it’s a church with amazing acoustics,” said Varnus. “ So finally I said, this is the mosquito of God.”

That building is the former Pilgram United Church in Brooklyn.

Varnus says he was drawn to the church because of its location and all wood construction.

“Some of the new churches, which is made by [with] dry-wall, actually the acoustic is very dry, like a carpet store, it’s terrible. But somehow the wood church, even if small, has a very rare, very unique acoustic,” said Varnus.

The former Pilgram United Church has an all-wood interior. Photo credit: Xaver Varnus

He is renovating the parish house as his home and is making some upgrades to the church itself.

Still the church was missing one key feature and that’s a pipe organ.

He quickly set about looking for one and as luck would have it, the First Baptist Church in Truro had posted theirs for sale.

Not only was an organ available locally, but, it fit the Brooklyn church perfectly.

Moving a 14 ton organ made up of 3,000 pipes is no easy undertaking.

Some of the 3,000 pipes that make up the new pipe organ. Photo credit: Xaver Varnus

Varnus hired Colin Walsh and his team to dissemble, transport and reassemble the pipe organ.

The crew have moved the organ from Truro and have been putting it back together in its new home all week.

Varnus estimates it should be in place and operational before the end of the month.

He has been overwhelmed by the reception from the people in his new home. Since arriving in Brooklyn from Ontario, he had to follow the COVID-19 quarantine protocols. He says once he was finished his isolation, his neighbours , curious about the church’s new owner, have been bringing him food and gifts to welcome him to the community.

He intends to return that kindness by treating them to a short concert program of Bach once the pipe organ is installed, and according to Varnus, the best tea they’ve ever had.

That will be the first of many performances Varnus has in mind as he plans to put both the organ and his phone book to good use.

Over the years he has become friends with musicians from around the globe and he will be inviting many of them to visit Brooklyn.

Despite the massive renovations, for Varnus, owning an independent church with it’s own great pipe organ is a dream come true.

He says even when he falls to sleep at night exhausted he wakes with a burst of energy, eager to experience another day.

“What is the only difference between me and most of the other organists at age,” said Varnus. “I think God made a mistake and he put three more batteries in my back.”

Reported by Ed Halverson 
E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson