Pipe organ’s ‘voice’ renewed

A church concert in Kaimuki celebrates the organ's restoration

When the concert of classical liturgical music is held tomorrow at Epiphany Episcopal Church in Kaimuki, the audience can't possibly be more delighted than the two artisans who made it happen.

"A pipe organ gets sweeter over time," said Terry Schoenstein, a Honolulu pipe-organ builder who has installed the intricate musical instruments in several larger Honolulu churches. He repaired and refurbished the ensemble of 300-plus metal pipes that are the "voice" of the organ to be heard tomorrow.

The 10:30 a.m. concert in the sanctuary at 1041 10th Ave. is sponsored by the church and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Hawaii. It celebrates the restoration of the pipe organ and the recent announcement of a $1 million grant to the institute from its benefactor Bernard Osher.

Organist Donald Matsumori chose Christmas music and other compositions by Johann Walther, Johann Sebastian Bach, Flor Peeters and Hawaii composer John Diercks to show off the range of the 1979 Moeller organ.

Cathedrals and churches in Europe have pipe organs that are more than 200 years old, said Matsumori, a retired UH professor and volunteer musician at the church. The electronic version popular today is basically a computer with digitally recorded sounds of real pipe organs, he said. "And have you ever heard of a computer that lasts more than 10 years?"

Schoenstein chimed in, "A pipe organ is only getting broken in by then." That longevity is not necessarily good for business for the fourth-generation organ builder. But the musical instruments do need repairs, a potentially hazardous job, handling pipes made of an alloy containing the dangerous element lead. Pipes are described as "tin rich" or "tin poor," with the amount of tin in the alloy determining the pitch of each pipe, he said.

Schoenstein said an organ keyboard is essentially a collection of electric switches. When the organist presses keys, "he is opening and closing switches that activate electromagnets that allow condensed air to go into the pipe." Electric controls were added in the early 20th century to replace the original engineering of mechanical levers and linkage that "control the speech" of the pipe organ.

"Each pipe is a glorified whistle," the craftsman said. "The condensed air does the same thing as blowing into a penny whistle from a gum-ball machine." With all that said about the pipes, they won't be visible to concertgoers tomorrow. The Epiphany Church pipes are enclosed in a second-floor cabinet. That's a good thing, Schoenstein said, because "sound originating from an elevation resonates better than when it's down among the people."

The restoration of the organ was underwritten by the family of the late Michi and Richard Okinaka, longtime members of the church.

The concert is free, but a free-will offering will be taken to support church programs. The concert will follow the 9 a.m. service at which the church's primary organist, Karen Lui Leatherman, will play the organ.