We go inside the living, breathing Disney Hall organ as it turns 10

00:00

0

listen

[0]

BONUS AUDIO: John Rabe's 2004 piece on the then-new Disney Hall organ

I raised some eyebrows when I asked the L.A. Phil's Joanne Pearce Martin to play "Happy Birthday" on the Disney Hall organ. But she did so with gusto, as you can hear if you'll click the audio button above.

And why not?! The orchestra is marking the tenth birthday of its signature pipe organ this month, with those huge wooden pipes that look like a box of french fries.

The organ is a work of art and a musical instrument, but it's also a huge machine, one you can walk around the inside of, and from the inside — way up above the Disney Hall stage, above the organist's perch — you can see the pipes and fully appreciate the way they work together.

That's where I talked with  Manuel Rosales, who built the organ, and who demonstrated it with help from organ conservator Philip Smith, who played the organ from a console way down on stage.

Interview Highlights:

The organ is a living, breathing object?

It's complicated and each pipe is like its own musical instrument. And each pipe ages in its own way. Yet it has to be commingled with over 6,000 other pipes. So the way they sound today isn't the way they sounded 10 years ago. We can't say it's like fine wine that gets better with age; the molecules in the pipes soften and the tone mellows. But they don't lose their shimmer or their power.

Do other instruments have the organ's personality points?

A piano does, but it's very subtle. A harpsichord does. Harpsichords are the enfant terrible of the keyboard world. They change overnight — they can change in an hour. Organs are not quite that temperamental. But unlike an instrument that you can pick up and walk away with ... this has to all be done here. So we come to the organ on its terms, and we have to make the decisions of how we take care of it.

Do other concert halls have purpose-built organs like Disney Hall?

Some go back to the 1920s or so when those concert halls were first built. Some got rid of their organs or didn't maintain them and they just walled them up, like the Cleveland Orchestra. There are new concert halls — the one in Dallas has a beautiful organ, the one in Philadelphia; down in Orange County there's an instrument in the Segerstrom Hall. 

So it's become popular again to have organs. And people like coming to concert halls because there are fewer restrictions on the kinds of music that you can play. 

He built it; is he proud as the organ turns 10?

I'm real lucky to be here. That's the main thing. Many organ builders get to build organs in nice halls or nice churches, but they're a thousand or three thousand miles away. I'm 15 minutes away. So this is like my other living room.

The L.A. Phil has several upcoming concerts to celebrate the organ's tenth anniversary, including:

• Stephen Hartke’s and Saint-Saens’ “Organ” symphonies. (Nov. 20 at 8 p.m., Nov. 21 at 8 p.m., and Nov. 22 at 2 p.m.)

• “Happy Birthday ‘Hurricane Mama’: Pulling Out All The Stops”, hosted by Michael Barone of Pipedreams from American Public Media (Nov. 23 at 7:30 p.m.)

• The Holiday Organ Spectacular (Dec. 19 at 8 p.m.)

• Holiday Sing-Along (Dec. 20 at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m.)

• A continuing Organ Recital series in 2015 featuring Anthony Newman (Jan. 11) and Olivier Latry (April 19)

And check out the extra audio at upper right: My first piece on the Disney Hall organ, when it was a "newborn" in 2004.

This story originally appeared on the Southern California Public Radio website, and aired on Off-Ramp on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014.

Gallery

Fullscreen SlideshowPrevious Slide

8 of 8

1 of 8

2 of 8

Next Slide