Position on The New Castro Organ® - Cameron Carpenter (Reading time: c. 15 Minutes) I support the building of a landmark digital organ at the Castro Theatre, and I am making a donation to SFCoda. If you love organ music, you should too. But Im also asking some questions of the project which should occupy the minds of anyone considering a donation. What follows is a detailed elaboration. (This post will necessarily be of interest [or of disinterest, depending on the reader] chiefly to readers belonging in whatever way to the organ community). - Cameron Carpenter ABSTRACT: The organ community should support the Castro Theatres organ project (Castro Wurlitzer: Official) seriously. In return, project managers Castro Organ Devotees Association should 1) immediately provide greater transparency about the planned instrument and 2) more more vigorously align their ambitions for the new organ to continue and build upon the public affection that the Castro Wurlitzer and its players have generated for the last three decades. ### My website, North American PR team and this page have lately received many requests for comment on the organ project underway, partially via crowdfunding, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. I was asked by SFCodas President, David Hegarty, for my support and duly visited the Castro Theatre and played the existing organ on July 26, 2013 when I was in San Francisco for my last performance at Davies Hall. With SFCodas crowd funding effort closing around the time of my four nights with the San Francisco Symphony later this month, its timely to weigh in. One would think it obvious in 2014, amid the continuing decline of the organ and organist in church, the academy and popular consciousness (viz., among others, White, Michael: A Harmonic Drone Subsides in Britain: Once Top Musicians, Organists See Loss of Relevance. The New York Times, April 25, 2014: ), that the installation of a large and dramatic organ in a popular San Francisco theatre would be a cause for celebration and rallying-round among all but the most Luddite of the organ communitys opinionophiles. Instead, as Peter Sellars admonishes in rehearsal, The opposite - the opposite! In the prolific online commentary at which they so excel, many organists have taken a backward approach to SFCodas activities, whether in comments on local news outlets, on the Facebook page of R. A. Colby (builders of the new organs console) or in privately expressed opinions, including many private messages to my website exhorting me to denounce the project. Taken in sum - as such chatter only deserves - the jist is: Theyre converting a masterpiece into a monstrosity! As is also usual among those whose opinions are grounded in armchairs, facts, whilst readily available, are in short supply. The masterpiece vs. monstrosity argument is a false construct for two reasons: 1. The existing pipe organ is no masterpiece; is not original to the theatre; and is not even an original organ of whole cloth. It was built in 1982 from variously sourced Wurlitzer parts - a console from a theatre organ in Detroit, ranks of pipes from here and there (viz. , oral sources incl. David Hegarty, etc.). When I played it, the organ was enjoyable in a mid-level Wurlitzer way, but no single stop functioned completely and the overall impression was one of sloppiness and blurred edges. There is no authenticity dog in this fight. And, 2. The pipe organ is independently owned and is being removed from the theatre by its owners. This to be filed under done deal. Anyone who damns the proposed organ on theoretical grounds because it is digital, or draws their conclusions on the basis of the few existing renderings of the new console, fails to grasp that the choice is not between the Wurlitzer and a newcomer but between a digital organ or no organ - by which I include stopgap measures such as the small electric organ that predated the Wurlitzer. Of the three organs that have played to the Castro Theatres public since the opening of its current location in 1922, only one should be discussed in ominous tones: the Conn electric organ replaced in 1982 by the Wurlitzer. Would the opinionists really prefer the Castro to have another ignominious assembly-line organ with a model number of alphanumeric gibberish, exactly the same to be heard in the living rooms of theatre organ amateurs from coast to coast? Or perhaps the total disappearance of any organ would be better than a digital organ for the public image of the organist in San Francisco - anything, anything to avoid the shame, the dread, the sorrow and the pity of a digital organ? Anyone claiming this must also concede that they are a purist by dint of declaration. Let not those for whom the handling of a three-manual organ is a stress test cast aspersions on the possibilities of organs with seven. The organ community should support this project for their own good. It is demonstrably good for the trade to have live organists playing before the public as part of boutique local entertainment offerings, which is what the Castro in its diversity offers. It is demonstrably good for the organ and the organist to be seen as extraordinary, glamourous, unusual and as a kind of sophisticated, noteworthy live musical entertainment that brings added value to a well-loved venue. If there is anyone who actually deserves the usually pretentious term of organist titulare in 2014 it is likely David Hegarty, who has delighted many tens of thousands of listeners in over 30 years of service and who is the first person whose opinion you must seek to make any informed evaluation regarding the Castro issue. The concept he puts forward deserves our attention - and our scrutiny - all the more for its scope and its ambition, which in their radicality are likely costing him something to propose. Keep dynamic organ music central to the Castro experience, and do it with a conversation piece organ. However, SFCoda should, in exchange for our support, do the following. 1. TRANSPARENCY. Put an end to the organ communitys (so far mostly negative) speculation about the content of the instrument by publishing the design of the organ for all to see. Use Wordpress and Tumblr, supported by social media, to officially release all renderings and tonal concept sketches. Help the trade to understand SFCodas vision by elaborating that vision - instead of ducking the issue behind cliches of size and empty puff-piece PR writing. For example, were told on SFCodas landing page, , that …we have designed a spectacular new organ of international significance. For any organ to be received as spectacular is up to those who play it, and journalists - if you can get them to come - to judge during the organs opening season, and not before. An organ thats not yet built cant already be internationally significant. One-of-a-kind and world-class are weasel words. Its impossible to take seriously any copywriting that relies on these constructions as SFCodas statements do. These tautologies are loose talk - as is all the heavy breathing concerning the organs size. It is pointless to attempt to ascribe value to a digital organ by lashing it to the bricks-and-mortar yardsticks of the technology it is replacing. Were 100 pipe ranks somehow to be installed in the Castro, we know (from what little technical information SFCodas website provides) that the digital resources would still far outnumber the pipe resources. As usual, one suspects the pipes are provided mainly to patch over the superstitious insecurity that troubles those who think organs can only have pipes. The combination organ originated, after all, as a marketing concept (first debuted in 1972 by Rodgers Organs in their Gemini instrument) and this remains the combination organs main significance. Speaking of marketing, SFCoda would do well to align themselves in the eye of the public as introducing the worlds most comprehensive and diverse digital organ - a concept thats perhaps at least conceptually accessible to the public - than to muddy the waters by introducing language about the role of pipes. On opening night and ten years from now, the only thing worth a damn to the audience will still be what theyre made to feel. Furthermore, SFCoda does not tell us how many pipe ranks will be added; when the organ is projected (contracted?) to be completed, though it is apparently underway; what if any presentational system exists to make good on their seemingly all-encompassing promises of public concerts, facility tours, recordings, recitals, etc. - (indeed, how do they differentiate between recitals and public concerts?), and other basics. (For instance, there is not even citable information as to what company is actually building the organ. Those of us in the trade know that Allan Harrah is a daring organ designer, but the Harrah Organ Company is not mentioned; is it therefore to be assumed that this is a Colby organ? A Walker organ? Etc. Verifiability is here a bit thin on the ground). 2. FOCUS. At SFCodas Mission page we can read about a great deal of outreach planned for the new organ. As is becoming increasingly obvious in all stripes of classical music, outreach is a term that, to use a San Francisco reference at the expense of Uber and Travis Kalanick, is following the trajectory of another dubious trend word - disruption - from catch-all hot button phrase to possible liability. The ideas cited for uses of the new organ are good - and obviously whenever a major instrument is built, everything possible should be done to get it to children, educational outlets, and tours. But this should all be secondary to the organs primary mission which, if addressed by SFCoda at all, is at least taken too much as a given. It should be simply: to give the Castro a great organ that will entertain and delight in direct continuation of its existing 30-year history. Nowhere is this explicitly stated. I can speak with some small knowledge of the environs of high-level musical presentation, and the commerce attendant upon them, in San Francisco, because I have played several recitals in Davies Hall for the San Francisco Symphony, will play four nights with same and Michael Tilson Thomas later this month, and sold out Grace Cathedral for SFJazz back in January of this year. Whatever the musical economics of the Castro Theatre may be, its difficult to imagine the venue competing at all with either of those two formidable presenters, both commanding huge budgets, dedicated buildings and yearly seasons featuring the worlds leading artists. While I dont know what terms SFCoda would be offering to touring organists to foster the Castro as a venue for …public concerts, facility tours, demonstration presentations, recordings, recitals…, its hard to imagine an organist turning down a Davies Hall invitation from the San Francisco Symphony to play at the Castro Theatre. Speaking for myself, my loyalty to the International Touring Organ requires that I let it be heard only at a venue that has both the system and the moxy to present it prestigiously - exactly as both the Symphony and SFJazz do. This is a value that the Castro probably wouldnt be able to offer to any recitalist until after the passing of at least a few successful seasons - seasons which would require dedicated promotional and organizational staff and a serious analysis of competition in the local market. There is a presentational paradox and stiff competition. Has no one yet addressed the atrocious parking situation in the Castro? When I think of highly successful public secular organs in America - settings that SFCoda seems to want to emulate - I dont, despite my upcoming tour, think of concert halls. I think first of the great organ at Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa, AZ, particularly when heard under the hands of Lew Williams. This is a great instrument in an admittedly unpretentious, slightly slapstick, setting that has proved a great commercial success for many years partly by its alignment of ambition with reality. Organ Stop Pizza, and Lews astonishing ability to traverse more musical genres than Ive had hairstyles, has been on my mind lately as I plan the International Touring Organs first tour in the USA, a market vastly different than the European tour that it just completed. It requires - like the Castro organ will to succeed - different musical approaches than usually motivate classical concert hall programming. This would seem to be obvious in the case of a large theatre organ and yet the existing policy from SFCoda reminds me more of what Ive seen from certain less-imaginative artistic administrators of symphony orchestras and mainline concert halls, than what might be expected from a popular venue that already has a massive base of local enthusiasm. Worse examples could be found than Organ Stop Pizza, for what SFCoda might hope to achieve with the new organ. Some of these examples are the many American concert halls who have foolhardily assumed that installation of a large and expensive pipe organ would generate and sustain an outpouring of public interest, and that those organs would become centerpieces of local flowerings of creativity in the organ community. How could they, when one can usually practice only at night on a handful of days per month? There is no reason for the Castro to join the list of venues where the ambitions that attend the opening of a giant organ turn out to be impractical in the realities of a mixed-use venue, let alone justified by commercial demand. In conclusion, I heartily support the SFCodas efforts and I look forward to hearing the organ when it is completed. I will give some of my own money to help that come about, and I strongly suggest the organ community do so, too, for the general good. But quid pro quo, Clarice. A supportive community deserves more transparency about what theyre paying for, as well as a tightening of focus. It would be so satisfying if The New Castro Organ®* could pick up where the Wurlitzer left off, rather than tripping over pretentious stumbling blocks like the idea of monumentality. And it will be so disappointing if its chance at success is short-circuited by unrealistic expectations. Sincerely Cameron Carpenter *You can use it. No charge. C.C.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 17:48:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015