Orpheum Theatre Organ Provides a Show, but Future Players Needed
Ed Fuentes
On stage of the Orpheum, Steve Asimow spoke to the audience after a recital. One set of Wurlitzer pipes are in the background, above the balcony seating.
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — On Saturday, organist Steve Asimow carefully stood next to the Wurlitzer, then sat down to deftly flip the switches that control air flow to leather lungs connected to pipes. With a slight adjustment of a baseball cap, his head made a quick bow to catch a beat, then his hands roamed the keyboards and filled the Orpheum with music.
Asimow's brief recital, with an assist by Orpheum Organ Crew Chief John Koerner, was a highlight of Saturday's "All About the Orpheum" event, put on by the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation (LATHF).
Asimow is a volunteer with the Los Angeles Theater Organ Society (LATOS), an organization dedicated to preserving the old instruments. Organizations like these two have been waiting for a project like Bringing Back Broadway, with its potential to breathe life back into the historic theaters, and will be vital to its success.
Yet, LAHTF Executive Director Hillsman Wright states that many of those who grew up going to movie palaces, and who heard the organs played regularly before becoming 'hooked' for life, are passing away. "There's a real question hanging about the future of theatre organ enthusiasts and the instruments they so lovingly champion and care for," says Wright.
Matching music, whistles and sound effects with images is a fading art, and too many generations removed from being a regular nostalgic experience for most of us. Ironically, the Orpheum never featured silent films. Its organ was installed just before the move to talkies, and the theater didn't make its film transition until after the change.
Still, when you hear the organ in person, you can feel the hair on the back of your neck dance to the vibration of tone and melody, with the occasional sound of a bird for good measure.
Dennis Smith on September 23, 2008, at 12:15AM – #1
The afternoon tour was great and I learned a lot. Favorite facts-The organ is now stored in the offstage "animal room" which was used to house, well, the animals, during the theater's time as a vaudeville venue. The organ, which predates keyboard synthesizers, creates all its percussion sounds with actual cymbals and drumheads, situated up above with the organ pipes and struck via mechanical means. Ingenious!
John Crandell on September 23, 2008, at 03:48AM – #2
I remember taking my dad and stepmom here for a Sunday recital in the Eighties. Talk about feeling swept away! Listening to that sound gives you a sense of movement, as if you're riding on a giant carousel or heading down the Mississippi on a riverboat.
Tally's New Broadway theater up the street, where the old Silverwood's Department Store building now sits, was the locale where an organ was first put to use in a movie theater. Tom Tally, the one-time Waco cowboy, had followed his mother and three brothers to L.A. The brothers had ventured the city's first phonograph parlor, sold out, and then Tom came to town. He brought along the Kinetoscope which he'd bought in Waco and eventually established his very own movie studio and was able to lure Chaplin and Pickford away from that old cut-throat, Adolph Zukor.
John Koerber, Orpheum Wurlitzer Crew Chief on September 23, 2008, at 06:55AM – #3
Thanks Ed for the salute. Yes we do need volunteers both to learn organ maintenance and to help with shows. If you're interested, contact me by email - jkoerber(at)ix.netcom.com.