The glow of hundreds of candlelights and organ music filled the First Presbyterian Church on Saturday night in Newhall.  Musician Roger Greene played a variety of holiday music on an M.P. Möller Opus 2022 Theater Organ, which is a little over a hundred years old.   The organ was built and installed in 1915 at the Strand Theater in Mississippi, based off records of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society.  Greene said that he had personally selected songs in the spirit of Halloween, including “The Phantom of the Opera,” and a variety of Christmas and holiday compositions.  He started the concert with two classical pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, including Toccata in D Minor, BVW 565.  “I wanted to play it because people nowadays kind of associate it with Halloween because it sounds scary,” Greene said during his performance.   The piece was previously used in films including “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and in “Phantom of the Opera,” according to the New York Public Radio station.   Greene also included a song dedicated to Veterans Day and Yom Kippur.  The organ was previously used for silent movies and Vaudeville acts, according to a program sheet given out at Saturday’s concert.   William S. Hart, who was on a publicity tour in the early 1920s, decided to purchase the organ and transfer it to his home in Newhall after discovering that the theater was planning to replace it.  Historical records also said that the organ was rebuilt by the Robert Morrison Co. in Van Nuys.   The church then purchased the organ in 1925, contrary to the belief that Hart’s previous wife Winifred Westover donated it, according to SCV Historical Society Secretary Leon Worden.   “It wasn’t donated by anyone,” Worden said in an email to The Signal. “Church and Historical Society records show that the church purchased the 1915 Möller organ for $3,500 in 1925 on an installment plan, $20 per month at 6% interest. In fact, the church sold two residential lots in Newhall in 1926 to pay it off.”  Following an earthquake in 1971, the organ was reinstalled into the new church building in 1980.   Greene closed out the concert with the song “Fanfare for the Common Man” by Aaron Copland.  The post Hundred-year-old organ played by candlelight  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.