Open your mind and collect your thoughts on pipe organs. Now, take everything you thought you knew about organs and throw it out the window.

Frank Dodd is going to help you reorganize your ideas on organ music. It's his version of Organ Transplants.

"It's a play on words. It's an organ recital," said Dodd, who's been the organist and director of music at Westminster Presbyterian Church for seven years. "Most of the music is transplanted. We call them transcriptions. It was originally designed for music on different instruments and transcribed for playing on the organ."

Dodd will present his interpretation of Organ Transplants at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 1, at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 2151 Oregon Pike, Lancaster. Dodd's organ concert, which is part of Westminster's six-event music series, is free and open to the public.

A freewill offering will be accepted, and proceeds will benefit the music series.

"For me, the lines between performances and worship are really blurred, because every Sunday I perform as part of the worship service," said Dodd. "God has given me these gifts, and I want to share them. But in a concert like this, with music like this, I have to leverage the organ to make it sound like an orchestra. It's really fun."

Organ Transplants will include 10 pieces of music selected by Dodd, and the recital will last about 90 minutes. An intermission will be included as part of the performance.

"The recital will not be livestreamed, partly because we believe there's something magical about being at a live performance," said Dodd, a resident of Manheim Township. "It's one of those things you want to be at in person. The acoustics at the church really lends itself to the playing of the organ. The organ is versatile as an instrument, and it can be very entertaining. That's what this concert is setting out to do."

Staged on the day after Halloween, Organ Transplants will open with Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

"It's the quintessential spooky organ music," said Dodd. "That's going to set the mood for the whole night."

"For me, the highlight is that I get to play music I can't play on a Sunday morning," continued Dodd. "It's pieces from movies, musical theater, ballet and a Disney piece. There are three pieces back-to-back-to-back from 'Star Wars,' 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' and 'The Phantom of the Opera' that I really enjoy playing. These three transcripts of movie music aren't your typical fare for a church organist."

Several hundred individuals are expected to attend Dodd's performance, including church members, music lovers, Dodd's relatives and colleagues and members of the community.

"The organ originated a couple of centuries B.C. It's that old," said Dodd. "But it wasn't until the Middle Ages that it made its way into churches and cathedrals. The organ has slowly become the instrument of choice in churches. In the early 1900s, there were many large organs installed in churches and large auditoriums."

"It's much easier to pay an organist to play Tchaikovsky than to pay an orchestra of 100 people," Dodd continued. "That's where the transcriptions began. The organ became this instrument to play classical pieces of music to a lot of folks. You just needed a big organ and a big auditorium. Some of what I'm playing is that."

Dodd has been playing the organ - the boisterous musical cousin of the piano - for 28 years, since he was 10. He has reached a level of proficiency that has been fostered through the repetition of those God-given gifts.

"I grew up going to church, and I thought the organ was the neatest thing," said Dodd. "I was transformed as a kid. If I'm completely honest, I think (the proficiency) is 50% talent and 50% hard work. I've been working on this music since the beginning of the summer and most of these pieces I've never played before, so it's going to be a challenge."

The next concert in Westminster's Music Series, Joy to the World, will be presented at the church at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, followed by the New Jersey Chamber Orchestra at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31; the Messiah University concert choir at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 11; and Sandra McCracken, a ticketed event, at 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 9.

"In my seven years as director of music, this is the first organ concert I've done," said Dodd. "The congregants have been asking. Up until now I've been telling them I do provide one, every Sunday morning at 11. To me, it was obvious that now was the time."

For additional information, go to https://westpca.com/church-events/#music.