Organist celebrating Bach's birthday in Rothesay

Michael Molloy will be marking the 330th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach in Rothesay this weekend and he also celebrates his return to the organ.

Shift - NB7:53Big pipe organ

Michael Malloy is playing an organ concert to celebrate Bach's 330th birthday ... and he has a huge pipe organ in his own home!

Molloy is certainly well-known in the Saint John area as a musician and lover of music.

He led the famed Harbour View High School music program before his retirement a fewyears ago.

Now Molloy hasreturned to his first love: the organ.

He'scelebratingwith a series of concerts marking Bach's 330th birthday.

Over the three concerts, he'll play 330 minutes of Bach.

For an organist, Molloy says Bach is like air.

"Bach is the oxygen of the organ world. He's certainly the greatest of the composers for the organ. The music by Bach is the standard, the instrument by which everything else is measured."

Molloy's second Bach 330 concert isSundayat 3:30 p.m. at our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Rothesay.

The concert series is a part of Molloy's transition into retirement.

"When I knew that retirement was coming," Molloy says.

"I thought, 'What do I want to look at for the coming years? I'm not a golfer. I don't have a sailboat or a summer cottage or anything like that. What was missing at that point in my life because of several things I'd become involved in, was that I wasn't playing anymore."

So he went to work finding a pipe organ to put into his home.

He found one in Germany made by the Speith organ company with between 400 and 450 pipes.

The company's owner had built the organ for his father. But when the father became ill and could no longer play, they decided to sell.

The organ has to be taken apart, shipped to Canada and painstakingly reassembled in Molloy's home.

You can listen to Molloy's full interview with Shift New Brunswick by clicking on the audio buttonat the top of the story or listen to the audio here.