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10 THE COURIER SUN • SEPTEMBER 8, 2016 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com 9/11 15th ANNIVERSARY Ridgewood church plans a memorial  concert on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks BY CRISTIN NOONAN editorial@qns.com/@QNS St. Matthias Church will honor the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with a special concert scheduled to take place on the 15th anniversary of the day of infamy. The St. Matthias Choir, led by musical director Steven Frank, will perform at 4 p.m. this Sunday inside the house of worship at 58-15 Catalpa Ave. The choir of approximately 20 chorus members has prepared Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem for the occasion; the program will include both the English and Latin versions so that those attending can follow along and understand. Frank, who’s been playing the organ since he was 13, says that because of the “phenomenal” acoustics over at St. Matthias — what he calls a “beautiful room for making music” (and he’s right: St. Matthias is insanely beautiful) — the result is that it can sometimes be diffi cult to parse through the words sung. Where some places might use microphones to remedy said situation, Frank is proud to admit that the choir only performs acoustic, “just the way it was 100 years ago.” The members of the St. Matthias choir has been practicing throughout the summer but it was only recently that everybody came together in one room. “I fi rst met with the altos, and then the sopranos, the tenors, the bases,” Frank said, explaining that isolating sections out is necessary for quality and cohesiveness. The concert will be composed of three pieces by the choir and three organ pieces by Frank and will last an hour at the most. St. Matthias hasn’t held a requiem for the victims of 9/11 several years since 2007. The Fauré Requiem in particular was last performed in 2007 for its memorial concert, and Frank tells The Courier that “it’s a shorter one, it’s very tuneful, it’s very easy for the audience to assimilate.” Beginning on a somber note, the fi rst piece of the concert, “For the Fallen” by Douglas Guest, was written “for the soldiers in Westminster Abbey for the tomb of the unknown soldier,” Frank said. The concert ends triumphantly with Théodore Dubois’ “Seven Last Words of Christ,” hoping to lift attendees’ spirits so that they leave on the highest note. Frank has been with St. Matthias for the past year and a half, following 21-year stints with Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Church in Ridgewood and St. Pancras Church in Glendale. “I have some singers that have been with me for 40 years,” he said. Frank added that St. Matthias has “a long tradition of really good music,” adding, “I’m keeping it going.” When Frank stepped into his role as director of music at St. Matthias, he tells The Courier that their choir had been very small. He left such an imprint in his most recent and similar position at St. Pancras that most of their choir followed him in his new pursuit. “This choir is now a combination of two choirs,” Frank said. Frank was at St. Pancras on 9/11 and, following the attacks, was asked to perform music for an impromptu Mass that evening. Because all the phone lines were out and the Mass was added at the last minute, Frank was fl oored by the turnout. “The church was packed. How did everybody know?” he asked. “I supposed they say, ‘Well, let’s go to church.’” Fresh Meadows resident contributes to construction of 1 World Trade BY SUZANNE MONTEVERDI smonteverdi@qns.com/@smont76 One Fresh Meadows resident and Port Authority employee found a special way to cope with the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy and helping the city rebuild. Ranjit Sahni is the senior program manager at the Port Authority of NY & NJ and was the lead designer of One World Trade’s central chiller plant, which powers the air conditioning for much of the rebuilt World Trade Center site. After getting his bachelor’s degree in engineering at Punjab University in India, Sahni decided to move to the U.S. He settled in Jamaica Estates in 1981, and 1985 he moved to Fresh Meadows, where he has lived with his wife and three children ever since. Sahni began working for the Port Authority in 1992 as a senior mechanical engineer. In 2004, he was asked to take on the important task in the construction of One World Trade Center. “Since my background is mechanical, the Port Authority wanted me to handle all of the heavy mechanical work — which is the central chiller plant, which we had pre-9/11,” Sahni said. Sahni started designing and planning the system from scratch. After years of collaboration with the project’s design team, the design was implemented in 2009. The central chiller plant is a 13,500- ton capacity system located within a 80,000-square-foot space. It is designed to cool the WTC Transportation Hub, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, retail space and other non-commercial areas. It is a smallerscale design of the system which cooled the original Twin Towers, but was specifi cally designed to be more effi cient and environmentally friendly. Using a special river water pump station, the unit uses water from the Hudson River to cool and dehumidify the space. “For about two years, we had a back and forth conversation and discussion with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation,” Sahni said. “By using river water, we are conserving energy; we are conserving water.” Working in a nearby Port Authority building on another project, Sahni saw the tragic events of Sept. 11 unfold through his offi ce window. “I was sitting my offi ce, and through my back window, I could see the towers. It was visible. And somebody came running to me, ‘Sahni, Sahni,’ he said, ‘something has happened,’” he remembered. Sahni began calling co-workers and friends he knew who worked in the Towers. “Nobody was picking up the line,” he Photo: Suzanne Monteverdi/QNS Ranjit Sahni in his Port Authority offi ce. recalled. “It just rang and rang.” Sahni and his coworkers went down to the building’s cafeteria to turn on the television and fi nd out what was going on. Then, they saw the second plane hit the South Tower. “I was supposed to come to the World Trade Center for a meeting at about 10:30, 11,” he recalled. Before returning home from work that day to be with his family, Sahni made a stop. “First, I went to a temple,” Sahni remembered. “I just wanted to pray.” After the attack, many New Yorkers struggled to fi nd a way to cope with the tragedy. For Sahni, his involvement in the project helped him deal with his emotions. “I felt, when they said, ‘You will be running the central chiller plant,’ I said, ‘perfect,’” Sahni said. “It gives you some confi dence that we can do something in our life, that we can pay it back.” Sahni will be commemorating the 15th anniversary of the tragedy on Sept. 11 by attending a service at St. Peter’s Church in Manhattan.


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