Edie Johnson will play the inaugural recital Sunday, Dec. 16 on the new $1.5 million Casavant Freres organ at St. Paul's Episcopal Church.

Like Rome, new pipe organs aren't built in a day.

One of the latest examples of what's commonly called "the king of instruments" has been in the works at St. Paul's Episcopal Church for years.

As part of that process, a church committee visited and evaluated major pipe organs in Indianapolis. Then Frank Boles, St. Paul's organist and associate for music, heard instruments in Georgia and North Carolina.

A Canadian organ-building firm, Casavant Frères, was hired to undertake the design phase, as well as the roughly three-month installation.

And now, St. Paul's $1.5 million organ -- complete with 90 ranks, or sets, of pipes and an elegant Gothic-style case built of red oak -- is ready for its first public hearing. Its installation is part of a $14.5-million remodeling of the church.

Edie Johnson, St. Paul's assistant organist and choir director, will do the honors at the inaugural recital at 4:30 p.m. Sunday.

Johnson said she will play three J.S. Bach chorale preludes for the Advent season, two movements from Charles-Marie Widor's Symphonie No. 6 and Gerre Hancock's "Fantasy on Divinum Mysterium."

A dedicatory recital will take place at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 18 with John Scott, an internationally known English musician who is organist and director of music at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York.

Essentially two interrelated instruments, St. Paul's organ consists of a four-manual console positioned near the high altar, and a two-manual in the back of the nave. The larger instrument contains 59 stops and 76 ranks, and the smaller one, 13 stops and 14 sets of pipes. All told, the instrument has 5,144 pipes, making it one of the city's largest organs.

"Technically, there are larger ones in town," Boles said. "There are large organs at East 91st Street Christian Church and in the Scottish Rite Cathedral, but the new organ at St. Paul's is among the largest."

The Casavant firm has been known for building instruments in a French romantic style, but Boles said the St. Paul's organ is in keeping with a post-1990 trend toward a "warmer" and "more English" sound.

Johnson said she thinks the new organ "gives you a very surrounding feeling. You never feel as if you're attacked by the instrument. I think our last instrument (a 1950s-vintage Moller) would kind of attack you with its shrillness. This one embraces you."

Boles said the intent is for the new organ "to be here 100 years from now."