News of another new one...

[KB7DQH]

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/197201/

It's not exactly how you want your church's organist to feel after Sunday morning worship.

"Two of the most recent directors of music told me that on Sunday afternoons they used to go home and cry after using the Moller," said the Rev. April Ulring Larson, pastor of First Lutheran Church in Duluth.

She was referring to the Moller pipe organ that had been the church's primary musical instrument since 1951.

First Lutheran will enjoy its first Easter services today with the Moller's replacement: Opus 52, a $1.2 million tracker-action pipe organ built by Dan Jaeckel and his staff at Jaeckel Organs, the company Jaeckel founded in Duluth in 1978.

The organ, which has been in use to some degree since Oct. 3, is part of a makeover of the church's sanctuary. Pews have been replaced by chairs that can be set in a variety of configurations. Flooring of linoleum and carpet has been replaced by Peruvian limestone, improving acoustics, said Karen Sande, First Lutheran's interim music director. Interior brick has been cleaned and windows added to let in more light.

That's something Jaeckel, 64, has resolutely avoided. Jaeckel Organs, ranging in price from $40,000 to $1 million-plus, can be found at Emory University in Atlanta, in the Bahamas and in Tokyo. But Jaeckel has made no more than 60 organs. He has never had more than 10 employees, and three of the six he has now have been with him for more than 25 years.

Every organ is custom-made at Jaeckel's shop in the old Salter School on London Road, disassembled, then reassembled on site. It's a long process — three years to design, engineer and build First Lutheran's organ, Jaeckel said. Although electronics may be used in a Jaeckel organ, the core functions — the linkages between the keys and the valves and the pipes — are mechanical. Those linkages are thin strips of woods known as trackers, which is why the organ is called a tracker organ. It's the way organs were built in Johann Sebastian Bach's day (1685-1750), and such organs last a long time.

"One of the earliest Bach organs is still being played," Larson said. "We know tracker organs seem to have at least 300 years of life or more in them. ... Even this building might not be able to last that long."

Thinking about three centuries of service puts the money spent on the organ in perspective, Larson said. And Jaeckel said the church got a good price, both because the work was done locally and because he and his wife are members of First Lutheran.

Still, couldn't a church do a lot of other things with $1.2 million?

Larson answered that question by pointing out that First Lutheran gives the first 20 percent of its money to benevolence — charity that goes outside the church. Moreover, choosing a fine-quality organ represents the people of the church giving their best to God, she said.

Eric
KB7DQH