Organs Music

In an abandoned church in Halberstadt, Germany, the world's longest concert moved two notes closer to its end Monday: Three years down, 636 to go. The addition of an E and E-sharp complement the G-sharp, B and G-sharp that have been playing since February 2003 in composer John Cage's "Organ2/ASLSP" ("Organ squared/As slow as possible").

CLAD IN jeans and a long-sleeved Von Dutch T-shirt, blond, blue-eyed Christoph Bull shucked his rock 'n' roll boots and got set to work. Nearby, Max Kaplan, a twentysomething student in a T-shirt, khaki shorts and flip-flops, whipped out his ax and got ready too. Soon, the sounds of a clarinet-organ jam filled the air of the UCLA music studio.

Nancy Hefley looks like the meek lady behind you in the supermarket checkout line unloading a week's worth of groceries for the family. Tall and trim, her brown hair cut short and neat, butterfly-shaped glasses riding the bridge of her nose, Hefley hardly looks the part of a musician who gets standing ovations 80 nights a year from crowds that sometimes top 50,000.

Without warning, the sleeping giant stirred to life. There was a faint quiver at first, followed by a deep rumble that seemed to shake the walls. Then a high-pitched moan echoed down the hallway. Suddenly, the pulsating beat of the "Hornpipe" from Handel's "Water Music" swept across Reseda Elementary School, stopping pupils and teachers in their tracks. "Wow!"

When Royce Hall, severely damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, finally reopened less than two years ago, much was made of new adjustable acoustic elements, the massive structural underpinning, the lighter, brighter feel of the place. The plain panels above the stage went barely noticed. But Tuesday they will rise, revealing gleaming hooded trumpets and other pipes of the hall's best-kept secret: a newly restored and expanded organ, created by the famed Skinner Organ Co.

Crystal Cathedral organist Frederick Swann is the most famous organist in the world. No one else comes close. An estimated 20 million people--in 165 countries--see him every Sunday playing on Dr. Robert H. Schuller's "Hour of Power" program. But after 16 years in Garden Grove, Swann is leaving to become organist-in-residence at First Congregational Church in Los Angeles at the end of this month. He'll give a farewell Friday. A public reception will take place Aug.

The Hazel Wright organ at Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove has been variously described as the fifth largest organ in the world, the fourth largest and the third largest "fully operable" organ in the world. Allowing that all of the above are arguably true, Frederick Swann, the cathedral's music director, added another possibility--the one he prefers. "It's the second largest among church organs," said Swann, who plays the instrument Friday as soloist with the Four Seasons Symphony.

The competition among churches for organists has gotten so stiff that one church here resorted to sending 240 letters to other churches looking for the names of organists who might be interested. "We're not trying to steal your organist," the letters from Cicero United Methodist Church said. But they struck out. The search continues. Six years ago, 469 students in music colleges were majoring in organ, according to the National Assn. of Music Schools. By last year, the number had fallen to 293.

There are two reasons to visit Spud Koons' motorcycle shop in Long Beach. One is to buy or have serviced the BMW or Suzuki motorcycles in which Koons, a 70-year-old widow, specializes. The other is to enjoy the harmonious hums of one of the largest theater pipe organs in Southern California. "People come from all over the world," said Koons, whose free Saturday night garage recital/concerts have drawn 50 to 100 people each week for the last 19 years.

In the beginning, just about every church in America had an organ and an organist, making music that filled the sanctuaries, stirred the soul and uplifted the spirit. "Rock of Ages." "How Great Thou Art." Leading the human voice in song was the power and substance of an organ. Not so now. "I tell preachers, 'If you've got a good organist, chain him to the bench,' " said pipe organ builder and restorer Harry J. Ebert of Pittsburgh.

It may be the job title of a lifetime, but then, it may be the gig of a lifetime. As the newly appointed organ conservator of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Philip Allen Smith is curator and defender of the spectacular centerpiece of the hall's layout.

With a show business smile and a striped shirt he might have borrowed from Larry David, John West could be a well-fed Westside screenwriter. Instead he's dedicated, in his own way, to the much more august art of the pipe organ. "Fifty years ago, the organ was the biggest thing going," West said this week. "It could shake the earth and rattle the walls."

In an abandoned church in Halberstadt, Germany, the world's longest concert moved two notes closer to its end Monday: Three years down, 636 to go. The addition of an E and E-sharp complement the G-sharp, B and G-sharp that have been playing since February 2003 in composer John Cage's "Organ2/ASLSP" ("Organ squared/As slow as possible").

Even before a note is played on a massive pipe organ, the imagination is stirred by the sight of three, four or more broad keyboards stacked one above one other, panels of 20, 40 or more pullstops alongside to control an amazing variety of sounds, and a row of 30 or more foot pedals at the base of the console.

Eighty feet above the limestone floor of L.A.'s new cathedral, John Ourensma crouches over a row of organ pipes. Pulling one out of its wooden rack, he narrows its cone-shaped base with a brass tool that looks a little like a candle snuffer. Replacing the pipe, he pulls a walkie-talkie to his mouth. "Try it now," he says. Suddenly a blast of air sends a shatteringly loud middle C into the confines of the narrow workspace.

The organ pipes spill from Mission San Juan Capistrano's Serra Chapel like handkerchiefs out of an old vaudevillian's sleeve, one leading to another and then another until a whole river of fabric tumbles out. In this case, the pipes emerge from a 12-by-8-foot room in the loft at the rear of the high, narrow chapel. There are more than 500 pipes in all, the smallest the size of a pencil and the largest 8 feet tall and 10 inches across. Some of the pipes are made of wood, but most are metal.

Bay Theatre owner Dick Loderhose just wanted to give Orange County audiences some good toe-tapping tunes. But back in the disco-reeling 1970s--when the rich sound of a theater organ lingered only in the collective memories of a generation past--Loderhose bought a piece of musical history decades after most such instruments had been sold for scrap metal or a song. Lucky for organ enthusiasts, he lugged it from New York's Paramount Theater--five truckloads in all--to Seal Beach's Bay Theatre.

A 98-year-old walnut Estey Reed organ now sits in the Serra Chapel at Mission San Juan Capistrano, just as it did for about 30 years earlier this century. The organ arrived by truck last month as a gift from the estate of Maureen Sutton of Washington, who had reportedly bought it from a Santa Ana antique dealer. That's when Nick Magalousis, the mission's museum director, enlisted the help of mission archivist Charles A.

The organ pipes spill from Mission San Juan Capistrano's Serra Chapel like handkerchiefs out of an old vaudevillian's sleeve, one leading to another and then another until a whole river of fabric tumbles out. In this case, the pipes emerge from a 12-by-8-foot room in the loft at the rear of the high, narrow chapel. There are more than 500 pipes in all, the smallest the size of a pencil and the largest 8 feet tall and 10 inches across. Some of the pipes are made of wood, but most are metal.

For nearly 30 years, the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo has helped re-create themoviegoing experience as it existed during the silent film era and the early days of talkies. The sound of a 1925 Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ filling the air during a silent movie or before the screening of a vintage Hollywood film has made visiting the theater a special event for numerous Southern Californians.