Jonathan Ortloff ~ Organist and Organbuilder





Writings
Harrison's Forgotten American Classic Aeolian-Skinner Opus 953 Strong Auditorium, University of Rochester, New York Organ Historical Society The Tracker Summer, 2005	Rochester, New York has long been a city of great wealth and innovation. It was here that George Eastman established the Eastman Kodak Company, and with his invention of flexible film in the late 19th century brought about a revolution in photography, making him millions. In 1949, the Haloid Xerox Corporation revolutionized printing technology with its Model A copier, the first dry process document reproducing machine. And Bausch and Lomb, the third partner in Rochester's corporate trinity, revolutionized optics in the same way Eastman revolutionized photograph.

44/10,000: The Half Percent Legacy American Theatre Organ Society Theatre Organ July/August, 2007	Nineteen twenty-six was a banner year for the Rudolph Wurlitzer Manufacturing Company, particularly the unit orchestra department. In this year, when the factory reached the hitherto-unheard-of production rate of shipping one organ per business day, some of its most famous organs left the factory, including the first and largest five-manual, for the Michigan Theatre in Detroit, and the definitive New York Paramount instrument. The Wurlitzer organ had nearly reached the zenith of its development, and the record sales demonstrated the strength of the brand popularity. That it had such recognition ("Gee dad, it's a Wurlitzer!") was a testament not merely to sleek publicity, but to the high quality of the product.

Partners in Preservation A report on the 2007 EROI Festival American Theatre Organ Society Theatre Organ January/February 2008	The mention of oral history usually conjures up images of native peoples, smoky, fire-lit nighttime scenes, and tales filled with mythic creatures and legendary human figures. The world of the fluorescent-lit organ chamber seems so diametrically removed from images such as these that oral history appears to have nothing to do with it. But in reality, much of the history of pipe organs, and theatre pipe organs specifically, is maintained in an oral tradition, passed along to each new generation. Oral history, however, has the inevitable attribute of altering the story it preserves. In the passing of information, memories can be hazy and details can be confused, ending with the kind of result we're all familiar with after a long game of 'telephone' in which what comes out at one end bears little or no resemblance to what went in at the other. While in the game, this is of little consequence and is the whole amusing point, in history, this is a perilous example of degradation which confounds historians in the future, searching for vital details in a written primary document that doesn't exist.

Profit in a Recession A Review of the 2009 Organ Historical Society Convention American Guild of Organists The American Organist Forthcoming, Fall 2009	When Walter Holtkamp, Sr. published advertisements in The Diapason describing Cleveland as a "town of good organs, a profitable place to visit," one might read between the lines that Cleveland was full of his organs and that the uninitiated would profit from hearing them. Such a succinct statement appealed to the planners of the 2009 Organ Historical Society convention; indeed they adopted it as a slogan and flew it across advertisements and convention literature. But, as nearly 550 attendees (the greatest number ever to attend an OHS convention) discovered between July 5 and 10, the statement rings true even without Holtkamp's slant. With 33 performers demonstrating 31 instruments over six days, there was plenty of musical profit to go around.

Lectures
The Sleeping Giant Documenting the Forgotten 953, Aeolian Skinner Opus 953 Lecture given at 2007 Eastman-Rochester Organ Initiative Festival October, 2007	One month after the contract for the Groton organ was signed, G. Donald Harrison wrote to Henry Willis III and succinctly described his rapidly developing thoughts on tonal design saying, "I'm after a really satisfying full organ without reeds and one on which counterpoint stands out clearly as it does in an orchestra". His subsequent organs can rightly be called experimentation in an attempt to prove his hypothesis; organ chambers were his laboratory, and his results were well documented in the nearly uniform glowing praise his new organs received. One would expect that with each new organ, as he honed his style a little more, that there would be a steady supply of reports on the success (or not) of each instrument. It is surprising then, for a documentary point of view, that the organ we talk about today, the largest and most complete to date in 1937 received comparatively far less press than the Groton, Advent, or St. Mark's organs. And in general, there is disappointingly less documentation about the genesis, construction, and initial reaction to Opus 953 than its predecessors, at least to the extent our research has taken us. So we come from opus 936, a tremendously altered organ with an immense body of documentation to opus 953, an organ as best preserved as any we have, but missing much of the documentary evidence Jonathan Ambrosino unearthed in his work at Groton. Where does one begin, then?




	© 2009 Jonathan Ortloff