Featured Performer
Martin Ellis
Although Martin Ellis does not work for Reynolds Associates, he
has become a good friend. Martin is Assistant Director of
Music and Organist at North United
Methodist Church in
 |
| Martin Ellis |
Indianapolis, and also maintains a very active recital schedule.
Martin Ellis
began musical study at an early age, and has been an active
organist, composer, arranger, and accompanist for many
organizations throughout the
Indianapolis
area.
Mr. Ellis is one of the senior staff
accompanists for the Indianapolis Children’s Choir and Youth
Chorale, serving their advanced and high school ensembles.
Additionally, Ellis has recently
been named the third member of Trio Con Brio with friends Donna
Parker and Jonas Nordwall, performing concerts on three separate
organs simultaneously.
With Trio Con Brio, Mr. Ellis has
appeared at major theatre and classical organ venues and has
just released their most recent compact disc
"In the Key of Three."
Ellis is an active organ soloist in
both classical and theatre organ venues, and has appeared with
the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Carmel Symphony
Orchestra in recent years.
In addition to concert work, Martin
is a composer and arranger for two leading choral music
publishers.
Martin Ellis will play the rededicatory recital at
First United Methodist Church in Somerset, KY at 3:00 p.m. on
Sunday, May 4. This is an excellent opportunity to hear
Martin play, and also to hear the results of our recent
renovation and tonal redesign of FUMC's 1960s-era Wicks organ,
showing what can be done to improve these ubiquitous organs.
For details about the organ and the concert, see below.
Click
HERE to see a video of
Martin performing the Reger Toccata in d minor in concert at
North United Methodist Church.
(This is a large .mpg file, and should be viewed over a
high-speed Internet connection.)
The Old Centrum
Update on an Historic Instrument
As of March 31, the Old Centrum
building in Indianapolis will be closed.

Until a use can be found from the historic
former home of Central Avenue Methodist Church, the facility
will be "mothballed."
In a telephone conversation with Marie Beeson, who has been the
Executive Secretary of the Old Centrum Foundation, the building
will be overseen by a professional organization that manages
historic sites. The building, which is listed on the
National Register, is the home of one of the last two remaining
organs by Indianapolis organ builder Thomas Prentiss Sanborn.
The II/33 instrument is the only Sanborn organ that can still be
heard in its original acoustal surrounding.
After a silence of several years, the Sanborn organ was heard
last summer (2007) during the national convention of the Organ
Historical Society. The demonstration recital, played by
Indianapolis organist Dr. Charles Manning, followed several
months of rehabilitation by our firm. The work was done as
part of our contribution to the convention, and in the interest
of preserving a noteworthy piece of Indiana musical history.
A report about the program and the Sanborn organ appeared in The
Indianpolis Star.
For the time being, at least, the organ will remain where it is.
It is presently not for sale, and there continues to be the hope
that one day it will be completely restored along with the
magnificent room that has been its home for over 110 years.
The firm that will manage the Old Centrum facility will seek a
church or organization that can finish the renovation of the
structure, and make it once again a thriving religious or
cultural center in the heart of the city.
If there is any change to the status of the building or the
Sanborn organ, we will report it on this site. You may
hear a recording of the Sanborn organ here.

Shepherd by the Lakes Lutheran Church
New Organ Heard for the First Time on
Easter Sunday
For one northern Indiana congregation, Easter of 2008 will be
long-remembered,
signifying the
realization of a dream that will enrich worship for generations.
For years, the
congregation of Shepherd by the Lakes Lutheran Church dreamed of
having a REAL pipe organ. Instead, music for services has
been provided by a very elderly Wurlitzer electronic organ.
The new Reynolds
Associates pipe organ for Shepherd by the Lakes has been
completed, and was heard by the congregation for the first time
during the morning worship service on Easter Sunday.
A few years ago, the congregation
got wind of an old pipe organ that was for sale. They
bought it, moved it, and stored it in the church and in the
basement of the organist's home. Last year, the church
contacted us to see if we could fashion an organ for the church
out of this salvage.
When
we examined this old organ, we found that, although it contained
some material worthy of conservation, a new organ was
really the right thing for the church. The budget would be
tight, since the church is
working toward a major expansion project in a few years, but a
good organ was
desperately
needed, and the congregation did
not want to settle for an electronic.
After several months of thought and planning, we were able to
design a new organ for Shepherd that includes pipework that,
although not new, was mostly "newer," and entirely appropriate
to an organ of this sort. The only really old pipework in
the new organ is a 16' Bourdon built by Austin in the 1920s, and
an elegant Kimball Gemshorn that is about 100 years old.
All the pipes in the organ have been reconditioned and revoiced
in our shop.

This organ
is also unusual in that it was built using our "chassis"
design, developed in our shop
by David Reynolds. This design is compact, lightweight,
and incredibly strong. One advantage to the design is that
the organ - including the windchests and pipes - can be moved
easily. This is important since, in a few years, the organ
will be relocated to the church's new sanctuary. Looking
toward that day, our design includes a planned
expansion that will double the
instrument's size and tonal
palette.
Meanwhile, the instrument consists
of eight unenclosed
ranks
of pipes. Shepherd by
the Lakes is looking forward to having
their new organ in service by the end of February. The
project has been spearheaded by Pam Reed and organist Beth
Haller. They have received great support from the
congregation, which is pastored by Pastor
Jerry Winegarden.
Plans are being made for a
dedicatory recital.
For more information about this
unique design concept, please contact us.
Revoicing Project Completed
Big Benefits from a Small Project
In 1960, the Casavant Organ Company
completed opus 2575, a III-manual, 56 rank organ for First
Baptist Church in Indianapolis. At the time, the Casavant
firm was in a period of artistic change under the leadership of
their newly-appointed tonal director, Lawrence Phelps.
Just at the time that 2575 was under construction, Phelps was
beginning his historic tenure at Casavant.
The organ at First Baptist was
apparently considered to be a bit harsh-sounding for the FBC
congregation, since several minor attempts at tonal change were
made over the decades. One of these projects (by organ
builders unknown) was to lower the wind pressures throughout the
manual divisions. The result of this was that the organ
was perpetually and forever flat, and could not be brought up to
standard pitch.
Typical of organs of its time, this
First Baptist organ has a large number of mixture ranks (nearly
1/3 of the total rank count), with strong emphasis on the upper
harmonics. By contrast, the foundation work (8' and 4'
stops), as well as the 16' Pedal stop, were weak. The
instrument had very little tone color.
Our project at First Baptist, which
lasted about a month, involved revoicing the foundation work in
the organ, strengthening the 8' flutes and principals, "taming"
the mixtures, and regulating the reed stops. As part of
this project, we also readjusted the wind pressures in the
manual divisions, repaired a number of broken pipes in the
Trompette en Chamade, and made minor repairs to the console
and bench.
When a pipe organ is functioning
properly, it is often possible to improve its sound by carefully
evaluating the existing pipework and revoicing. Sometimes,
one or two important ranks of pipes can be replaced, giving the
organ a new and much more listenable sound.
Renovation of an Antique Pipe Facade
Flora Organ Sounds Swell...
Now Looks GREAT, Too!
The 1914 Pilcher Case, following our
restoration.
After months of work,
the restoration of the 29 organ pipes that make up the facade
(pipe fence) of the organ at First Christian Church in Flora,
IN, has been completed. Along with the pipe facade
restoration, we also restored and refinished the lower case of
quarter-sawn oak. The case had looked so bad that it had
been covered by a curtain for fifty years!

The facade was part of an organ
built in 1914 by the Pilcher Organ Company of Louisville.
In about 1960, E.H. Holloway Corp. built a new organ for the
church, retaining the display pipes of the old facade, and
covering the lower part of the case with a velour curtain. The
zinc pipes had been repainted repeatedly, and had numerous
dents.
In 1998, Reynolds Associates rebuilt
the Holloway organ, and have subsequently made several tonal
improvements to the instrument. The visual restoration is
the latest improvement to the instrument, and one that gives a
new elegance and character to the craftsman-style sanctuary.
In our shop, we carefully stripped
and repaired the pipes, primed and basecoated them, and applied
decorative elements designed for the organ by Michael Lenhart,
who worked for the firm at that time. Missing elements of
the oak case, including a new center panel to fill in the space
where the original Pilcher keydesk had been, were created in our
shop by David Reynolds.
Along with the restoration work, we
also built and installed new expression shades, replacing the
old hollow shades that were loose and noisy.
To see a photo gallery of this
project, click HERE.
Pope Benedict XVI on the Organ
"Music and Song are More than an Embellishment of Worship"
Traditional music and traditional liturgy
have gained a new appreciation recently in almost all Christian
denominations. Even the Roman Catholic Church, which since
the Second Vatican Council has seemed inclined to throw the baby
out with the liturgical bathwater (to borrow an aphorism), has
shown new interest and a new appreciation for older established
worship formats.
Pope Benedict XVI visited his home
country of Bavaria in September, 2006, and dedicated a new pipe
organ in the Atle Kapelle in Regensburg.
According to an online article of
the Catholic News Agency, the Pope recognized the unique place
the pipe organ holds in Christian worship. His words are
worthy of Balzac, and are reminiscent of the French writers
lofty comments about the King of Instruments:
"Benedict, a piano player
himself, has been vocal about his deep appreciation for music,
particularly sacred liturgical music. After a brief
description of the process of restoration, which took eight
years and almost one million dollars to complete, the Holy
Father arose and spoke to the importance of music in the
liturgies of the Church emphasizing the “king of musical
instruments,” the organ.
"Music and song are more than an embellishment of worship," said
the Pope, "they are themselves part of the liturgical action."
The organ, "transcending the merely human sphere, as all music
of quality does, evokes the divine. ... It is capable of echoing
and expressing all the experiences of human life. The manifold
possibilities of the organ in some way remind us of the
immensity and the magnificence of God."
Read the Catholic News Agency
article in full
here.
Read the entire text of the Pope's remarks
here.
We couldn't have said it better!
Redesign and Renovation of 1960 Wicks
Organ
Somerset United Methodist Church Project
Completed
Somerset
is a beautiful small town
in rural south central Kentucky. Located between Lake
Cumberland, the largest manmade lake in the United States, and
the Daniel Boone National Forest, the community draws nearly 1.5
million visitors each year.
Following our completion in 2006 of
a new organ for First Presbyterian
Church in Somerset, Reynolds Associates was asked to prepare
a proposal for the renovation of the organ at First United
Methodist Church as part of a larger capital improvement project
in the church
First United Methodist Church meets
in a striking mid-century modern building in the center of the
downtown. The congregation has an active music program
under the direction of Ben Stapleton. Since 1960, this
music-making has been supported by a three-manual Wicks pipe
organ of 20 ranks. (Click here to see the original
specification)
The First Church congregation
actively embraces both blended traditional and “contemporary”
worship formats. We considered this important fact in
planning this project, wishing to provide elements in the pipe
organ that would have application in both worship contexts,
making its tonal scheme more eclectic than the original organ.
The instrument presented several
challenges. The console and electromechanical switching
system were both worn out. Typically for organs of this
builder and period, the sound of the instrument tended, in our
view, to be somewhat thin and harsh, yet without enough
fundamental power to ring the building acoustically. Some
aspects of the stoplist were clumsy for service playing and for
playing organ literature, and the voicing and regulation of many
of the stops was uneven.
The instrument’s tonal palette
lacked color. This is a common failing in very small
three-manual organs, since the number of ranks is often barely
sufficient to cover the most basic ensemble requirements in each
division.
The proposal we presented to the
church trustees in April, 2006, included three possible options.
Ultimately, after considering these, the congregation decided on
our three-manual, 26-rank tonal redesign, which also includes a
new console, renovation of the winding system, and a Peterson
ICS4000® solid-state integrated control system.
In
our tonal redesign of the organ, we replaced the principal
ensemble with new pipes of more appropriate scales and better
speech characteristics. Although ensemble elements can
often be rescaled and revoiced with great success, we felt that
new pipes were needed to achieve a more distinguished and
cohesive sound. Since the principal ensemble defines the
tonal character of an organ, the investment in these new pipes
is certainly worthwhile!
To provide the best possible sound
from these new pipes, we replaced the Wicks toeboards for the
new pipes with toeboards constructed in our shop using our CNC
manufacturing process. The toeboard is the top of the
windchest, upon which the pipes are placed. In the
original windchests of this organ, the electromechanical valves
are placed directly below and very close to the toe of the pipe,
allowing wind turbulence from the motion of the valve to affect
speech.
Our new toeboards include specially
designed internal channels to quiet this turbulence as it enters
the pipes, and to eliminate the disturbing “popping” sound that
is sometimes heard in electromechanical windchests. Our
experience has shown that this toeboard design is critical to
good pipe speech, especially in the principals.
Along with the new principal
ensemble, we have replaced the flutes in the Great division.
The new flutes include a Rohrflöte that plays in the Great at 8’
and 4’, and an open flute, the Offenflöte, that provides a rich
and colorful sound, useful either as a solo stop, or to add
depth and body to the ensemble. Combined with the 8’
Principal, the Offenflöte has the effect of broadening the
scale, yielding a sound much like an English Diapason.
Even in our smaller organs, we find that the inclusion of two 8’
flutes in the Great division is important.
The original specification did not
include any celeste ranks. These are ranks that are
purposely tuned either slightly sharp (Celeste) or slightly flat
(Unda Maris), to create a gently undulating sound. At some
time in the organ’s history, the original 8’ Spitzflote in the
Choir division had been repurposed to serve as a celeste with
the Gemshorn. This left the Choir with no 8’ flute.
The Swell division now includes a
new 8’ Viola. The original Salicional has been rescaled
and repitched as an 8’ Celeste. Likewise, we have rescaled
the 8’ Aeoline, moving it to the Choir division to serve as an
8’ Unda Maris, working with the Dulciana. The Spitzflote
in the Choir has now been returned to its important role as the
unison flute in the Choir division.
The pedal division was also
problematic. Although the organ contains a very nice
metal 16’ Principal and a solid Bourdon, it had little to
support very quiet manual sounds. In the new design, we
have extended the Great Gemshorn to 16’, by adding a
specially-constructed electronic voice extension that takes the
place of the twelve very large pipes that would otherwise be
needed.
The 16’ Gemshorn in the Pedal gives
the organist a very quiet string sound that is extremely useful.
Added to the Bourdon, it provides edge to the flute tone,
providing better for pedal notes, especially in contrapuntal
situations, where clarity of line in the bass is important.
The Gemshorn also plays at 16’ and 8’ in the Great, offering a
sub-unison stop that does not obscure, and a quieter unison stop
of very soft principal tone.
The organ has two reed stops, a
Fagotto in the Swell that will play at 16’, 8’, and 4’, and an
8’ Clarinet in the Choir division.
Taken together, we feel that the new
tonal structure of the organ is very comprehensive for an
instrument of this size, and that the new tonal architecture
will make sense to organists as they register the stops for the
wide variety of music required in a United Methodist Church.
The new console will also offer a
host of new musical possibilities.

With 100 levels of combination
action, assignable by organist, setups for multiple services and
users are possible, each without disturbing the others.
Organists can also program multiple arrangements for the
crescendo pedal, and can transpose music automatically to a
maximum of 6 half-steps sharp or flat. This is a huge help
when the wedding soloist can’t quite get the high notes!
The organ now has full MIDI
compatibility, including both the ability to play electronic
synthesizers and keyboards from the organ keyboards, and the
ability to actually play the organ from an electronic keyboard.
This function is useful for providing occasional non-organ
sounds (for instance, a harp on Christmas Eve), and for
integrating the pipe organ into more contemporary music.
In some cases, the organist must provide accompaniments for
songs that do not sound appropriate with traditional organ
sounds. In these cases, MIDI can allow these
non-traditional sounds to be used.
The
new console also has record/playback capability. This
feature allows the organist to pre-record selections and to play
them back on the pipe organ at a later time. This is not
audio recording; the system actually plays the pipes! This
can be useful in situations when the organist must be away from
the console (or even on vacation). It is also helpful as a
practice tool, allowing the opportunity for the organist to
listen to a selection from the pew.
Reynolds Associates is honored to
have the opportunity to work with the First United Methodist
congregation, and to create a modern, versatile, and more
distinguished sounding pipe organ from their old instrument.
Their investment in their original pipe organ, made almost fifty
years ago, is fully preserved, and will continue to be a
blessing for worshippers for generations to come.
Hear Martin
Ellis in a rededicatory recital on this organ on Sunday, May
4, at 3:00 pm. See below
for more details.
Organ Historical Society National Convention - 2007!
What
a summer it was!
The National
Convention of the Organ Historical Society was held in
Indianapolis in July, and the nearly 300 attendees from across
the United States got a real taste of Hoosier Hospitality and
got to hear some wonderful sounds from many historic pipe organs
in Central Indiana.
Since several of
our instruments figured prominently in this event, I can only
report on those events. While most of the attendees were
attending demonstrations and recitals, we were busy making sure
the instruments in our care were in perfect condition for the
world-class recitalists who performed on them.
The convention
opened with a breathtaking concert at Broadway United Methodist
Church, featuring the Broadway Festival Chorus and Orchestra
under the direction of Jack Fox, with our good friend
Christopher Schroeder at the console of the Reynolds III/54
organ. The concert was a tour de force, featuring
the Rheinberger Mass, and the Widor 6th Symphony,
arranged by the composer for organ with orchestra. The
performance was stunning! You can hear portions of this
program HERE.
A major effort
for us was the project to make the historic 1892 Sanborn organ
at the Old Centrum (Central Avenue Methodist Church) play after
many years of silence. This instrument (picture above
around 1910), which we hope one day to completely restore,
revealed itself to have a very sweet and elegant voice,
reminiscent of the quiet dignity of older days. Dr.
Charles Manning played a demonstration on the organ to a rapt
and fascinated audience. The organ is not restored - only
perhaps resuscitated. Dr. Manning worked around a number
of mechanical problems to deliver a performance that revealed
how vital it is to save this wonderful and eloquent piece of
history!
Dr.
Carol Williams, famed organist on the great Spreckels organ in
San Diego's Balboa Park, played an amazing concert on the IV/76
Kimball-Reynolds organ at North United Methodist Church.
Dr. Williams, a proud native of Wales, is a great virtuoso, and
also a very appealing performer. Her amazing musicality
and technical prowess is complemented by a warm, witty
personality. The day following her recital, Dr. Williams
produced a short video of the organ at North.
The convention
closed with a very unusual and thrilling program that will long
be remembered by everyone who heard it.
Ken
Cowan played a brilliant recital on the IV/66 Kimball organ
(restored by Reynolds Associates in 1999) at Zion Evangelical
Church in Indianapolis. That Ken played brilliantly on
this magnificent instrument is no surprise. His virtuosity
is legendary, and is matched by an appealing personality and
stage presence. This time, though, Ken had a secret weapon
- his wife!
Lisa Shihoten is
one of America's leading violinists. Like her husband, she
is also a warm and delightful person. Ken and Lisa joined
forces to bring us a concert of music for violin and organ.
Lisa's commanding musical presence was every bit a match for the
mighty Kimball, and in fact, the colors of this great organ were
a perfect match to the magnificent sonority of the violin.
One
memorable selection in the concert, the "Fuge, Kanzone, and
Epilogue" by Sigfird Karg-Elert, began as an organ solo.
In the second half of the piece, though, a violin was heard
coming from inside the organ chamber, soon joined by four
lovely women's voices also coming from inside the organ.
The effect of this piece was stunning, and, at the conclusion of
the piece, the performers were greeted by an enthusiastic
standing ovation.
There were other
great performances that I had to miss during this busy time.
But to all who planned, supported, and participated in the 2007
OHS National Convention, THANK YOU for a great experience!
Upcoming
Concert Information.
Martin Ellis. First United Methodist
Church. 99 South Central Avenue, Somerset, KY.
Sunday, May 4, 2008. 3:00 p.m.. (See article above).
Click
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