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June 19, 2007

Indiana Tones - Gloucester company to build university's organ

By Zac Cummings , Correspondent

GLOUCESTER - Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music was in a bind. The school, renowned for its organ department, had a concert hall without an organ.

Actually, the hall had a half-built organ, but no one to complete it. So the music school turned to organ designer and manufacturer C.B. Fisk, Inc. of Gloucester.

The university announced in early May that C.B. Fisk would rework the existing instrument, with delivery by the fall of 2010.

The wait has been long indeed - nearly 20 years, in fact. The original bidding process for the organ's commission began in the early 1990s. C.B. Fisk was one of the bidders, but the contract went to Los Angeles organ designer Manuel Rosales. For reasons neither Indiana University nor C.B. Fisk want to comment on, Rosales ceased construction before the organ was finished.

When Indiana University approached C.B. Fisk about completing the project, the company was initially skeptical.

"We weren't interested in fixing someone else's problems," said Steven Dieck, the company's president.

Eventually, Dieck and his team came to view the project as an opportunity to build a new instrument with a few old parts. C.B. Fisk plans to preserve most of the organ's casework and front pipes, but will completely redesign the organ's mechanical aspects.

"At first we didn't want to go in and finish it because we have a different concept of what it should be," said Gregory Bover, the company's vice president for operations.

C.B. Fisk's concept will include some 3,945 pipes, less than half of which will come from the original organ. The company will formally begin designing the organ in late 2008, then manufacture and construct the organ in 2009. C.B. Fisk will deliver the organ to Indiana University in the summer of 2009, when it will reconstruct it on site, Bover said.

This final phase includes voicing each individual pipe, a process that will require approximately 2,000 hours of meticulous work, Bover said. Voicing is an industry term that means adjusting an organ's pipes for the room's acoustics and their relative loudness.

"The pipes all have to blend as they should," Bover said. "It's one of the most artistic parts of the process. Voicers have to know how the pipes are going to work together."

The construction of the organ will be a collaborative effort, drawing on the skills and talents of the company's 30 full-time employees.



"Every instrument is unique, every organ has different specifications," said project manager Jason Fouser. "We're always learning how to improve things over time because we take the best from everyone to make the best."

With the initial feelings of skepticism behind them, employees of C.B. Fisk are enthusiastic about their latest project. The company enjoys making organs for academic institutions, where they have a lasting effect on future generations of organists, Bover said. C.B. Fisk has built approximately 30 organs for other academic institutions, including Oberlin College's music school.

"Indiana University's music school is one of the top schools in the U.S. and even the world if you want to learn how to play the organ," Bover said. "We're really happy to be doing another academic organ."

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Indiana Tones - Gloucester company to build university's organ
by By Zac Cummings , Correspondent , , Tue Jun 19, 2007, 11:58 AM EDT
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