This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Juneau’s State Office Building is home to the state’s only publicly available theater organ, and its fate is in question. The Kimball organ has been around for nearly 100 years, and it’s been part of the Alaska State Museum’s collection since the 1970s.
But now, the organ is approaching the end of its usable life. Rebuilding it would cost upwards of $250,000 and require shipping it to Portland, Oregon for a year.
Father and son Jonas and Chris Nordwall came to Juneau from Portland to take a look at the inner workings of the organ. In this episode of Tongass Voices, they talk about what’s needed to keep it going.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Chris Nordwall: I have a feeling those are all feather touch, right there. That one I already took down, go to the next note. Down. No, no, slowly. How quickly is it contacting?
Jonas Nordwall: Feather touch.
Chris Nordwall: All right.
My name is Chris Nordwall, and I am co-owner of Rose City Organ Builders in Portland, Oregon.
We came up to Juneau to tune the organ at the State Office Building, repair what we could in short order, and get it ready for what was the Friday afternoon lunch concert, and also then have the sit down discussion in the Q&A forum that was just held to find out what the fate of the instrument will be.
Jonas Nordwall: I’m Jonas Nordwall. I’m from Portland, Oregon, and currently I’m technically retired, but I’m at First United Methodist Church as the artistic music director, and I’ve been there 54 years.
I was approached by my son, who is a co-owner of Rose City Organ Builders, about coming up here to have a meeting with people at the museum about their Kimball pipe organ, and its possible future.
It was an opportunity to come up and see what’s going on and what the thoughts of the community are, because that’s the important thing. It’s not what the outsiders want to recommend. It’s what’s going to be the best results for your local community.
Chris Nordwall: This is a challenge, because you’re coming in and trying to diagnose something that isn’t original per se. Parts of it are, parts of it have been updated. I mean, that’s always the feel good thing at the end of the day, if you’ve actually nailed something down that you know has been an ongoing thing.
You’ll do what you have to do to get that note to function the way it should. It may not be the prettiest repair, but if it works for the performance, that’s what you’re going for. And I think that’s, what this thing has seen over the last 30 years. It’s had, the immediate needed maintenance to get it through the next day. And it’s kind of hit the brick wall.
So the other thing you have to be really careful about is you can’t start going too deep with this, because it’s like a Pandora’s box. You might be able to repair that you might cause 10 other problems in the process.
Every project that we’ve undertaken always has its own challenges, and there’s a lot of gnashing of teeth, there’s blood, sweat and tears, but the final product, when you hear it make music for the first time, is always thrilling, and when you see people enjoying it again as they remember hearing it and whatnot. It’s, it gives you a lot of momentum to keep going in an otherwise very small, niche market.
I hope it’s still around. I hope that it’s something that we’ll see a resurgence. Everything has to die off. Hopefully it won’t completely die off, but I hope to see that it’ll sort of have its rebirth in the not too distant future.
