Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ Launches Kotzschmar for Kids

The Kotzschmar Organ, 

Merrill Auditorium 

Portland City Hall,  Portland, Maine

For a century and a half, the name Kotzschmar has personified the outsized musical ambitions of the small city of Portland, Maine. Johann Carl Hermann Kotzschmar, who arrived in Portland in 1849 from his native Germany, became a leading citizen, beloved as teacher, organist, composer, and choral conductor. He lived at first with a Portland decorator and his wife, who then named their first child Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis. Curtis grew up and went off to Philadelphia to become the fabulously wealthy publisher of the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies’ Home Journal, and much else.

Two years after his namesake’s death in 1908, Curtis donated $30,000 towards a grand orchestral pipe organ for the auditorium of the new Portland City Hall that was being built after a disastrous fire had destroyed the old one. The new instrument was to be a municipal organ, owned and enjoyed by the citizenry, as a memorial to Hermann Kotzschmar, and with a municipal organist to do the honors. The first, Will C. Macfarlane, a noted organist and composer from New York City, dedicated the 69-rank instrument, Austin Organ Company Opus 323, on August 22, 1912. 

Ever since, the Kotzschmar Memorial Organ has been a beloved part of Portland’s municipal life. With the city, it has been through hard times, enduring financial hardships and even scandals; and with the city, it has also enjoyed high points. Curtis came through with another large donation for a significant enlargement of the instrument in 1927, with the addition of numerous upperwork ranks in the Swell, a new 14-stop Antiphonal division added to the original Echo division chamber, in the ceiling of the hall high above the audience, and a full set of percussion “traps” from Snare Drum and Glockenspiel to Marimba. All in all, the organ is, as Thomas Murray has put it, “a wonderful work of art which represents the best thinking and skills of its time.”

That time was the early 20th century. But in the late 20th century, troubles multiplied. The organ was twice damaged by manhandling during renovations of the auditorium. City funds repeatedly ran short, and the organ went into decline in the 1970s. Premature demise was narrowly avoided in 1981 by grateful citizens who formed the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ, Inc. (FOKO) to take over financial responsibility for the instrument. But three decades later, as its centennial approached in 2012 and its home, now named Merrill Auditorium, was again to be renovated, whether the organ could survive was again a real question.

The answer this time has been a resounding YES! from the people of the city, their elected officials, and other friends of the organ near and far and wide. All rallied to raise the money it took to restore and renovate the organ from top to bottom. Foley-Baker, Inc., the lead contractor, took the entire organ to its shops in Tolland, Connecticut, in summer 2012 and has overseen cleaning and revoicing of nearly 7,000 pipes and the building of additional ranks that bring the total to 104. Organ Supply Industries, Inc., Broome and Co. LLC, and A. R. Schopp’s Sons, Inc. all participated importantly in the work, and Austin Organs, Inc. provided needed parts. Foley-Baker built a completely new walk-in Austin Universal Windchest to the 1912 specifications of the original, 54 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 7 feet high inside, equipping it with the latest mechanical and digital technology. “All the thousands of valves and relays of manual motors are new—it was simpler to rebuild everything than it would have been to try to repair,” said Philip Carpenter, the project supervisor for Foley-Baker, which finished the new air box in mid-2013. 

Portland’s 66,000 people paid for $1.25-million of the $2.6-million cost of the organ renovation with a municipal bond issue financed with a $2 surcharge on all Merrill Auditorium events—operas, symphonic concerts, plays, and shows. Friends of the organ from Portland and all over southern Maine, as well as “people from away” paid for the rest, and more. “Very few communities have been able to build and maintain and preserve an organ as important as this, and most of the ones that have are bigger than this one,” said Laurence H. Rubinstein, FOKO board president. “We raised a substantial amount of money—much larger communities have fallen on their faces trying to do what we have done.” The ultimate goal is $4 million to endow positions for the municipal organist (now Ray Cornils, in his 24th year in the post) and for a curator and set up a fund for visiting artists and education programs. The pipes will all be back in place by the end of summer 2014, and Portland will celebrate this happy ending with a gala concert on September 27 with Cornils, Wanamaker Grand Court organist Peter Richard Conte, and full brass choir and percussion in a specially commissioned celebratory work by the organist and composer Carson Cooman. “It will be a wide-ranging program, which will highlight the immense tonal and dynamic range of the Kotzschmar, along with its wonderful ability to work symphonically with and without other instruments,” Cornils said. The organ will also be heard in Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass with the Portland Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1923, on September 30.

The story of Portland’s municipal organists is as full of cliffhangers as the history of the organ itself. John Morgan, who succeeded Macfarlane in 1919, resigned unexpectedly two years later. He left town with a woman after convincing her that her husband was not the Portland engineer he appeared to be but actually the Mexican bandit Pancho Villa. The city then persuaded the famous Edwin H. Lemare to take the job, but he lasted only until 1923. That year, the municipal music commission then in charge of administering the organ program asked him to play hymns for a community service before his contracted ten Sunday afternoon recitals a year (in addition to twenty-five evening recitals). They wanted him to take a salary cut besides. “I was assured by the commission which engaged me that such services were never expected of me,” he objected; “The reason for the attitude of the present commission is, so I am informed by its chairman, lack of funds, owing to the previous commission’s engaging such expensive artists as the great Russian basso Fyodor Chaliapin at the last winter concerts.” In a huff, Lemare went off to Boston and then Chattanooga—there were plenty of municipal organs in those days, especially in cities too small to support orchestras (today only Portland and San Diego, with the outdoor Spreckels Organ, Austin Opus 453, still have them).

Lemare’s successor, Charles Raymond Cronham, stayed until the spring of 1932, when the commission, by this time in a real financial crisis because of the Great Depression, dismissed him and persuaded Macfarlane to come back for another term. Cronham insisted that the job was still his, and little wonder—he earned more in 1930 than the superintendent of schools. There was a standoff until the end of May, when Cronham threw in the towel, but then the city council refused the music commission’s request for money to pay Macfarlane. Bickering continued until late 1933, when the exasperated city council voted to abolish the commission. Macfarlane soon decamped, and Alfred Brinkler, an Englishman, was named municipal organist in 1935, keeping the job until 1952.

The organ’s troubles began during the tenure of his successor John Fay in 1968, when the City Hall auditorium’s stage was enlarged by moving the organ back 15 feet. The movers jacked the huge Universal Air Chest off its foundations, put the entire 30-ton framework on wheels on steel rails, and rolled it, façade and all, out of the way of the construction crews. A 10-foot section of the chest had to be removed to make room for a chimney from the auditorium’s boiler room before the organ was trundled back, and a 32′ Magnaton rank whose 32 pipes would not fit in the new location was removed, and later lost. During all the moving, the 12 large-scale 32′ Contra Bombarde pipes either fell or were knocked over, wrecking their metal resonators.

Without some of its deepest bass sounds, the organ was put back into playing order, but soon city funds were again running so short that funding for concerts was cut off. In 1971 the city’s Director of Aviation and Public Buildings (!) recommended that the Municipal Organ Department be shut down. That was staved off when Fay and fellow organists raised enough money privately for at least a few concerts to continue. Douglas Rafter, who succeeded Fay in 1976, persuaded donors to give money to gild the façade pipes, but the city council, still strapped, made clear that this time it really was ready to abolish the department and eliminate his post. He resigned before that happened, but it did, in 1981.

At that low point, the mayor of Portland was Pamela Plumb, whose husband, Peter S. Plumb, was an attorney—and an organist. Encouraged by her spouse, Mayor Plumb kept the organ alive, but despite the heroic efforts of its acting curator, Burt Witham, things were touch and go. When the Boston Symphony Orchestra organist, Berj Zamkochian, brought a group of people from Kennebunk one Sunday morning to see and hear the organ, he had to apologize for its condition—wheezing and ciphering, many notes not playing. One visitor, Abbott Pendergast, was moved to bring a check for $10,000 for the restoration of the organ and present it to Russ Burleigh, the manager of the Portland Symphony, on whose board Peter Plumb also served. The two of them decided that the best way to save the organ would be an independent group of supporters that, with the blessing of the city council but not dependent on it for funds, would take over financial responsibility for the organ and hire the municipal organist. Burleigh came up with its name, and FOKO was born on November 21, 1981, with Plumb as president and Burleigh as treasurer.

They hired a Portland organbuilder, David Wallace, to start repairs, one division at a time. “Less than 25% of the manual ranks worked,” Wallace later recalled. “The organ was choked with a thick layer of sooty dust and had so many air leaks that the softest stops could not be heard at all.” The windchest had never recovered from losing its base in the 1968 move. But for quick fixes and ad hoc repairs, funds began to come in, from the city as well as from private donors, and Wallace could begin work. He built wooden resonators on top of the bases of the 32′ Contra Bombarde pipes that had been wrecked, and put them back into the organ. As FOKO’s archivist, Janice Parkinson-Tucker, writes, “In ten years FOKO raised enough money that 90 percent of the organ was restored and tonally preserved.”

Ray Cornils became municipal organist in 1990 and soon became the personification of what the Kotzschmar Organ means to the city, through innovative educational and children’s programs and an annual “Christmas with Cornils” with organ, brass, handbells, and other instruments. A $9.7 million remodeling of the City Hall auditorium was to begin in 1995, however, requiring the removal of the stage organ once again, this time for two years. Cornils and the Friends took the concert program to St. Luke’s Cathedral on State Street, with its E.M. Skinner organ (Skinner Organ Co. Opus 699, 1928), and Wallace and the Organ Clearing House stored the Kotzschmar pipes in a nearby warehouse. Other work rebuilt the missing ten feet of the windchest, with pneumatic relays and solid-state controls. The 32′ Contra Magnaton that had been removed in 1968 was replaced with similar pipes that came from another Austin organ, Opus 279, at Smith College. 

The reconstituted Kotzschmar organ was brought back and inaugurated again on April 22, 1997, in the hall, renamed Merrill Auditorium. The following year four donors, Anita and Charles Stickney and Sally and Malcolm White, gave $130,000 towards the purchase of a new Austin five-manual console, the fifth in the organ’s history.

But all the quick-fit patchwork over the years was not holding together for the long term. Within ten years, the giant windchest was leaking so much air that it was beginning to sound like a hovercraft. Working inside, technicians found that relays and contacts controlling the pipes above were corroded and unreliable. The pipes themselves were once again full of dust, and the voicing out of regulation. Metal fatigue let some pipes collapse on themselves. 

The pedal bass stops that had been damaged and repaired were troublesome, and some of them could not be tuned. In early 2007, the FOKO board had raised some money and wanted to add a couple of new bass voices. But, as John Bishop, its organ committee chair, recalled, “We got an expert who came, with others, and inspected, but they said they couldn’t make additions to the organ because it was in such poor condition.”

What to do? The board decided to ask a panel of experts, who came that August. Its members—Peter Richard Conte; L. Curt Mangel III, curator of the Wanamaker Organ; Jonathan Ambrosino, organ expert and consultant; Thomas Murray, university organist and professor of music at Yale University; Nicholas Thompson-Allen and Joseph F. Dzeda, both of the A. Thompson-Allen Company, the curators of the Skinner orchestral organ in Yale’s Woolsey Hall auditorium; and Walter Strony, a noted theatre-organ performer—agreed unanimously in two days of deliberations that the Kotzschmar Organ was a national treasure with a global reputation, and recommended that FOKO should commission a thorough survey of how to dismantle, clean, repair, and rebuild it, and how to raise the money. 

The board then hired Ambrosino to do a thorough study of what needed to be done, and Rubinstein and Plumb formed a fundraising campaign committee and began training volunteers. They quickly realized that having the project completed by 2012 would be impossible, and decided to make the centennial that year a festival that would launch the start rather than the completion of work. “We knew we had to raise at least $2.5 million, and we decided on a two-pronged strategy,” Rubinstein said; “Peter Plumb had great access to the city council, and when we approached the city, that did the trick.” In September 2011, the mayor then, Nicholas M. Mavodones Jr., and the rest of the city council voted to issue $1.5 million in bonds, $1.25 million to be matched by FOKO and the rest to make additional small improvements to Merrill Auditorium. “It wasn’t really debated at all,” said Bob Keyes, a Portland Press Herald reporter. “Nobody suggested that better things could be done with the money. The organ has always been universally supported.” 

Four companies bid for the job after FOKO issued contract specifications, and it went to Foley-Baker, which had had experience dealing with work in busy auditoriums before, with the restorations and renovation of the Boston Symphony Hall Aeolian-Skinner and the Duke University Chapel Aeolian instruments. When the last note was played at the Kotzschmar’s centenary gala on August 22, 2012, Foley-Baker technicians came dramatically onstage and started taking down pipes. Later, Mike Foley, the company’s president, observed, “I don’t think we’ve ever worked on so high-profile an organ that was in such tough shape.” 

The Friends and Cornils knew that the work would take two years and hit the road with educational outreach programs in schools, “Christmas with Cornils” and “Bach Birthday Bash” evenings in churches in Portland and other cities, and much else, to make sure nobody in Portland would think the Kotzschmar was not coming back. As the renovation progressed—the new air chest, large bass pipes, and expression boxes were all installed and work on the Echo and Antiphonal divisions was completed during the summer of 2013—they also hosted visits and crawl-throughs so that Portlanders and other donors could see what their money was doing.

The work this time is meant to last another century. Besides cleaning (especially impressive with the façade pipes, once again gleaming gold), re-regulation and some revoicing, the changes in the specification will be especially noticeable in the bass ranks of the pedal. The 32′ Contra Magnaton—only 12 pipes—from Smith College had never tonally fit in with the rest of the organ, and some of them had been badly damaged. They have now been put in storage behind the organ, replaced by twelve new wood Haskell basses that extend the organ’s original 16′ Open Wood stop, now renamed, to 32′. Another new stop, a metal Principal, also plays in the Pedal at 16′, 8′, and 4′, as well as on the Great at 8′.

A 32′ reed stop with only half-length resonators, the Contra Tuba, has been removed, and new full-length 32′ Contra Bombarde pipes with industrial-strength metal resonators replaced the wooden ones Wallace had supplied decades ago. A new V-rank Mixture in the Great replaces a IV-rank Mixture donated in 2002. The Swell has additions of a 4′ Octave and a 4′ Clarion. 

The numerous tonal percussion stops above the Solo division have all been completely rebuilt and reconditioned, and the non-tonal cymbals and drums have been relocated to a position above the Orchestral division, along with some new toys: Birds, Car Horn, Door Bell, Train Whistle, Fire Gong, and Hoofs, among them. The five-manual console has been completely rebuilt and renovated.

All in all, it amounts to the glorious rebirth of a great American cultural monument. “The city of Portland is extremely appreciative of our community’s support, and of the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ for being such great stewards of this historic instrument,” said the city’s current mayor, Michael F. Brennan; “We look forward to the return of this city treasure.” 

—Craig R. Whitney

Cover photo credit: Len Levasseur

With appreciation for Janice Parkinson-Tucker’s Behind the Pipes: The Story of the Kotzschmar Organ and Hermann Kotzschmar: An Appreciation, published respectively in 2005 and 2006 by Casco House Publishing of South Portland, Maine.

The Kotzschmar Organ

At 2:23 a.m. on January 24, 1908, a fire started, ironically, in the wiring of a new-fangled fire alarm system that was housed in the office of the city electrician on the third floor of City Hall in Portland, Maine. Public alarm was quickly raised, but freezing temperatures hampered the operation of the primitive fire fighting equipment, and the building was completely destroyed.

City leaders lost no time recovering from the disaster. The New York architectural firm of Carrère & Hastings, newly famous for their design of the New York Public Library completed in 1908, was engaged to design the new building, which was built, decorated, and furnished in just a few years and was ready for dedication in the summer of 1912.

Less than four months after the City Hall fire, on April 15, 1908, Portland’s most highly revered musician, Hermann Kotzschmar, passed away. A German immigrant, he had been encouraged to move to Portland by Cyrus Curtis, an interior decorator, prominent citizen, and music lover, who had heard Kotzschmar perform in Boston. When Kotzschmar and his wife moved to Portland, they lived in the Curtis home until they were established and could find a home for themselves.

Hermann Kotzschmar became organist at First Parish Church in Portland, formed an orchestra and choral society, and was the beloved teacher of scores of young musicians. The friendship that developed between Curtis and Kotzschmar was so close that Cyrus Curtis named his son Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis (1850–1933). Cyrus H. K. Curtis made quite a success of himself, founding the wildly popular The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies’ Home Journal, and later acquiring The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Evening Post, and The New York Evening Post. He amassed a vast fortune and was a prolific philanthropist.

After learning of Hermann Kotzsch-mar’s death, Cyrus H. K. Curtis approached his lifelong friend, Adam Leighton, former mayor of Portland and chair of the City Hall building commission, offering to purchase a huge pipe organ to be installed in the auditorium of the new City Hall as a gift to the people of the city of Portland. He commissioned the Austin Organ Company of Hartford, Connecticut, to build the organ, and wrote to Mr. Leighton, 

I have given them carte blanche to build [the] organ, unhampered by any organist or music committee, and without any prejudice or pre-conceived notions of my own, knowing that they are better qualified to build the right kind of instruments than I could be or any committee whose member might differ in their views as to what was best.

He continued, 

As this organ is to be a memorial to Hermann Kotzschmar, I have asked [Austin] to provide some sort of place in the organ front for a bust of Mr. Kotzschmar and I am writing Mrs. Kotzschmar for photographs of her late husband with the idea of putting them into the hands of the best sculptor I know.

The cost of the organ was not to exceed $30,000, and Curtis’s gift made necessary alterations in the plans for the building, at a cost totaling $23,244.75, which was quickly authorized by the City Council.

On July 1, 1912, Mayor Oakley Curtis and the Portland City Council approved the formation of a music commission of three persons who would serve three-year terms. The commission would be responsible for the maintenance of the organ and the selection and hiring of the municipal organist. The virtuoso Will C. MacFarlane was appointed the city’s first organist; he was on the bench on Thursday, August 22, 1912, for the dedication of City Hall and the Kotzschmar Organ. The program opened with Léon Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique, followed by a prayer and Owen Brainard of Carrère & Hastings presenting the mayor with the keys to the building.

Chairman Leighton gave a report to the assembly that included the announcement that the cost of the building was $930,934.34. His report concluded, 

And now, Your Honor, Mayor Curtis, please accept from the fellow members of the building commission their hearty good-will, along with the formal relinquishment of stewardship of this beautiful structure, which is destined, we believe, to enhance Portland’s title to the compliment it so often receives of being the most beautiful city of the New World.

Cyrus H. K. Curtis then took the stage:

Mr. Mayor: 

I present to the City of Portland through you, this memorial to Hermann Kotzschmar, who for more than fifty years was pre-eminent in this city as organist, composer, and teacher, a man who was loved by all classes for his kindly spirit, his high ideals, and his devotion to music.  

He cared little or nothing for material things or for fame­—he never sought them, but here is his monument—a monument to one who did something to make us better men and women and appreciate that indefinable something that is an expression of the soul.

Cyrus H. K. Curtis purchased three different Aeolian organs for his home in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, and in 1926 he purchased the immense Austin organ (146 ranks!) for Irvine Auditorium in Philadelphia as a gift to the University of Pennsylvania. The depth of his devotion to the art of music is seen in the heritage left by his daughter, Marie Louise Curtis Bok, who worked at South Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School, teaching underprivileged children.¹ She realized the need for a high-quality school of music that would be available to anyone, and in 1924, founded the tuition-free Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in honor of her father, so the influence of Hermann Kotzschmar is actively alive in Philadelphia as well as in Portland.

The Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ

The Kotzschmar organ had a wonderful career as a cultural icon in the center of the city’s artistic life. A succession of brilliant musicians served as municipal organist through the first half of the twentieth century. But by the 1970s, the organ had fallen onto hard times. The city’s budget was strained, and its leaders found it difficult to preserve the budget for the care and use of the organ ahead of essential services.

In 1980, Berj Zamkochian, organist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, brought a group of friends to see the Kotzschmar Organ. Among them was Maurice Prendergast, late of Kennebunk, Maine, who was impressed by the organ but dismayed by its condition. A few days later, he visited the offices of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, and presented executive director Russ Burleigh with a check for $10,000 to be used for repairing the organ. As the organ was owned by the city, Burleigh felt that it would be inappropriate to accept the gift on behalf of the orchestra, and conferred with PSO president Peter Plumb. The idea of forming a non-profit group devoted to the care of the organ emerged, interested parties negotiated with the city to assume the responsibility for the care of the organ, and in 1981, the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ (FOKO) was founded, with Peter Plumb as founding president.

A board of directors was established, fund raising began, and FOKO presided over critical repairs to get the organ back on its feet. Concert programming was renewed, and the organ regained its active presence. When the City Hall auditorium was renovated in the 1990s, the organ was removed from the hall for safe keeping, and the stage was significantly enlarged. Through heroic efforts by FOKO and the herculean devotion of organ curator David Wallace, in 1997 it made its triumphant return to the newly renamed Merrill Auditorium.

Transition and growth

Ray Cornils was appointed Portland’s tenth municipal organist in 1990.² Ray’s tenure of 27 years in that position is the longest in the history of the position. His consummate musicianship, his gracious and welcoming personality, his affinity for working with young people in FOKO’s vast educational efforts, and his skill at nurturing the complex relationships between FOKO and the City of Portland have been essential to the growth and success of FOKO. Ray was patient with the failing and recalcitrant organ, coaxing it through its dying breath on numerous occasions and helping scores of visiting organists navigate its treacheries. Ray’s ability to show the organ in its best light, no matter the circumstances, was central to its continued prominence.

Ray was equally essential to the lengthy task of the renovation of the organ, working with the organ committee through dozens of complex meetings, assisting in raising funds, and continuing as the ambassador for the Kotzschmar Organ. He helped play the organ out of the hall as the renovation began and played it back into Portland as a renewed instrument. In many ways, Ray Cornils has been “Mister Music” for the city of Portland and the state of Maine.

David Wallace first met the Kotzschmar Organ at the age of six, the beginning of his devotion to the instrument, and the formation of his career as an organbuilder. David’s zeal was essential to the organ’s survival through budget cuts, near abandonment, and the immense chore of bringing it back to life after the renovation of the hall. Although news reports heralded the return of the “restored” Kotzschmar Organ, David knew as well as anyone that its days were still numbered.

In 2007, the reality of the organ’s condition was made clear to the board of directors, and plans for a serious and comprehensive renovation of the organ were formed. You can read in depth of the history of that process, from startled realization, to the thrill of the organ’s second triumphant return to the hall in 2014 on FOKO’s website at www.foko.org/2012-renovation/.

During the 2016 annual meeting of FOKO’s board of directors, Ray Cornils announced his retirement, to be effective after the traditional holiday concerts, “Christmas with Cornils,” in December 2017. A search committee³ was formed in October 2016, whose work started with the realization that the newly renovated organ could serve as a vehicle for a new life for the organization. Purposefully intending to remain open to structuring a new position around the talents of the next municipal organist, the committee solicited applications, reviewed recorded submissions, and selected six finalists who would travel to Portland for live interviews and auditions in May and June of 2017. After the auditions, the committee quickly reached a unanimous decision.

The Eleventh Municipal Organist

On Monday, September 18, 2017, the board of directors of the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ voted unanimously to accept the recommendation of the search committee to appoint James Kennerley as Portland’s eleventh municipal organist. That evening, at its regular bi-monthly meeting, the Portland City Council welcomed an ensemble named Burundi Drummers Batimbo United in a colorful thunderous performance in City Council chambers. They took special action to change residency requirements for Class C board members of the non-profit Portland Fish Exchange, made several special proclamations brought forward by Mayor Ethan Strimling, and acted on the order to appoint James Kennerley as municipal organist, effective January 1, 2018.

James Kennerley began his formal musical education as a chorister at Chelmsford Cathedral, where proximity to the organ inspired his interest in the instrument. He holds degrees from Cambridge University and The Juilliard School, and the prestigious diploma as a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. After holding positions at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Christ Church, Greenwich, Connecticut, and St. Mary the Virgin (Times Square) in New York City, he presently serves as organist and choirmaster at the Church of St. Ignatius of Antioch in New York City, where he directs a professional choir of 18 voices.

James won first place in the 2008 Albert Schweitzer National Organ Playing Competition and was winner of the 2013 composition competition of the Association of Anglican Musicians. He is active in New York and abroad as an organist, harpsichordist, singer, and conductor.

Recently, James and I sat together in my apartment in New York City to chat about the start of his work in Portland. He spoke eloquently about the role of the performer, bringing thought-provoking expression, musical and artistic statements both old and new, and outright entertainment to sacred congregations and secular audiences alike. But while serving a church is to be organist to the people of the church, serving as a municipal organist is to be an ambassador, a host, and a musician all at once.  

He expressed his excitement about getting to know the people of Portland and to drawing audiences to the city from afar. James and his wife, Emily, had gotten to know Portland earlier through visits with friends who live there—friends who consider Portland to be a hip and up and coming place to live, “the Brooklyn of the East Coast!” It is a city of about 65,000 residents (the size of a usual neighborhood in New York City), in a metropolitan area of about 250,000, and is home to a fleet of flourishing arts organizations including the Portland Art Museum and the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

The recent renovation of the Kotzschmar Organ is testament to the population’s commitment to the arts. It’s hard to believe that $2,400,000 could be raised for such a purpose in a city that size. By contrast, with all its cultural wealth, there is no public secular pipe organ in New York City.

James spoke of the newly renovated organ in the beautiful auditorium as a fresh canvas on which to paint a new musical picture. His vision as host is to welcome the city’s residents and visitors into City Hall, into a world of the arts including offerings from all disciplines.

By comparison, he spoke of the chef and owner of a fine restaurant, welcoming patrons into comfortable surroundings where an exciting world of things both familiar and unexpected is waiting.  Perhaps one weekend, we’ll depart from the usual menu and venture into an interesting world of exotic cuisine. Perhaps one week, we’ll invite a guest chef to approach the home stove and present something new to the neighborhood.

And as we talked, he took the restaurant metaphor further. He and Emily had just returned from a vacation in Europe, where they traveled off the beaten touristy path to remote villages in Spain where no one spoke English and where restaurants didn’t offer English menus. With little or no command of Spanish, and by cobbling together some understanding of Latin, and wisps of other languages, they ordered meals and were sometimes surprised by what turned up.

James compared that experience to the average citizen who shows up for a concert, is handed a menu in a foreign language, and takes his chances from limited knowledge as to what’s coming. The maître d’hôtel escorts the diner to his seat, unfolds the napkin, offers a glass of water, and explains the intricacies, the ingredients, and philosophies of each dish. The performer as host, as maître d’hôtel, can introduce a composer, place the music in the appropriate geographic and political context, and draw the average listener into an enlightened experience that is otherwise unattainable. The more you know about something, the easier it is to order and enjoy something unfamiliar.

The hot seat

The search committee established a tough audition process. Merrill Auditorium is a very busy place where time is at a premium, and the committee balanced the desire to hear the largest possible number of live auditions with the need to provide candidates with time to prepare at the organ. Candidates were given two hours of practice time to prepare one hour of audition performance. Just look at all those knobs. It was a daunting task.

James Kennerley had never played the Kotzschmar Organ before his audition, and in those two precious hours, he mined the tonal ore of the instrument to the deepest depths, and produced a program that included sophisticated serious music, glimpses into whimsy and fantasy, and a virtuosic romp of his own creation on the Brazilian smash hit, Tico-Tico no Fubá.  

Portland audiences, you have no idea how much you’re going to love welcoming James Kennerley as your eleventh municipal organist. Come early, come often. Bring your friends, lots of friends. We’ll be happy to recommend restaurants. It’s a big hall. There are plenty of seats. It’s going to be a blast.

Notes

1. Marie Louise Curtis’s first husband was Edward Bok, editor of her father’s magazine, The Ladies’ Home Journal. Their son, Curtis Bok, was Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Their grandson, Derek Bok, was president of Harvard University. Marie Louise Curtis’s second husband was the violinist Effrem Zimbalist, director of the Curtis School of Music. His son, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., was an actor, renowned for his starring roles in 77 Sunset Strip, and The F.B.I. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr’s., daughter, Stephanie, played Laura Holt in the NBC detective series, Remington Steele.

2. Will C. MacFarlane served two tenures, from 1912–1918, and 1932–1934.

3. Members of the search committee included John Bishop, Tom Cattell (president of the FOKO board of directors), Andy Downs (director of public facilities for the city), Elsa Geskus, Tracy Hawkins, Brooke Hubner (executive director of FOKO), Peter Plumb, Larry Rubinstein (chair), Harold Stover, and Mark Terison.

The 101-rank Kotzschmar Organ in Portland, Maine, is 100 years old, is about to undergo renovation--and Portland, Maine has ponied up $1,250,000 to care for its treasure

It was a dark and stormy night . . .¹

In the early hours of January 24, 1908, a cold westerly wind gusting to thirty miles an hour buffeted Portland, Maine. With the temperature hovering in the mid-teens, the wind chill factor was between forty-five and fifty degrees below zero. Around 2 am, two men walking up Exchange Street toward Congress Street smelled burning rubber, noticed a red glow in City Hall, and ran to the Central Fire Station.²

Ironically, the fire was caused by a short circuit in Portland’s Gamewell Fire Alarm, which was housed in the city electrician’s office in City Hall. The fire, fanned by the strong winds, spread rapidly through the building. Firefighters responded from neighboring towns, but their primitive equipment was not equal to the emergency, and by morning the grand building was a smoldering wreck encased in ice. Government records were lost and the city’s fire chief was seriously injured, but there were no fatalities and the fire was confined to the single building.³

City leaders were quick to respond. Less than six months later, Mayor Adam Leighton announced the appointment of the famed architectural firm Carrère & Hastings (designers of the New York Public Library) to design the new City Hall, which would include a large auditorium. An Australian pianist visiting Portland pointed out that many British and Australian city hall auditoriums included large pipe organs, and Mayor Leighton called on his friend, the publishing magnate Cyrus H. K. Curtis, who responded with a gift to the City of Portland for a large concert pipe organ to be installed in the new auditorium. The organ would be named for Cyrus Curtis’s namesake. Mr. Curtis set two ground rules: the organ would be built by the Austin Organ Company without any direction or interference, and the cost should not exceed $30,000.⁴

The life of  the 

Kotzschmar

The 101-rank Kotzschmar Organ is 100 years old as I write today. As the City of Portland was forced to stop funding for the organ and its programming in the late 1970s, a not-for-profit organization called Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ (FOKO) was formed in 1981. You can read about the history of the organ and of FOKO at the website www.foko.org, and you can see the organ’s stoplist at www.foko.org/stop_list.htm.  

The organ was expanded by Austin in the 1920s and physically moved across the stage by a house-moving company in the 1960s. Merrill Auditorium was reconstructed in the 1990s and the organ was removed from the hall, to be returned when the hall was ready—on a shoestring budget, through the Herculean efforts of the organ’s curator and the FOKO Board of Directors. After a century of ups and downs, it’s great to report that programming has expanded to include significant educational outreach, bringing the pipe organ to public schools in the Portland area. FOKO has even had a portable three-rank pipe organ built that travels to schools to enhance these efforts. Hundreds of great organists have played recitals on the organ, and it remains a beloved icon in the center of Maine’s largest city. If you live in one of America’s more populous states, you may imagine Portland to be larger than it is. With an art museum, symphony orchestra, municipal organ, and opera company, the city boasts an unusually rich cultural life for its population of just over 66,000 people!

Over the past five or six years, the people of FOKO have come to grips with the fact that the Kotzschmar Organ is in failing condition. It sounds great, and has been played energetically and regularly all along. But to reuse a well-worn phrase, it’s time to pay the pipers, all 6,760 of them! To shorten the long story of a complicated path, FOKO, the City of Portland, and the people who love the Kotzschmar Organ have come up with the perfect gift for the organ that has everything in celebration of its hundredth birthday—the millions of dollars necessary for a full-blown, soup-to-nuts renovation, which will take place in the workshop of Foley-Baker, Inc. of Tolland, Connecticut. The City of Portland has set a bold example for government support of artistic and cultural activities by providing a matching grant of $1.25 million toward the renovation of the organ, an amount readily matched by private gifts. 

Centennial celebrations

The new City Hall and the Kotzschmar Organ were dedicated at two o’clock on the afternoon of August 22, 1912. At two o’clock on August 22, 2012, a large gathering of pipe organ professionals and enthusiasts were gathered in a meeting room at the Holiday Inn by the Sea in Portland in a plenary session concluding a week-long Centennial Festival celebrating the Kotzschmar Organ and its role in the life of the city. Michael Barone, host of Minnesota Public Radio’s Pipedreams, was moderator. The panel included the panoply of performers assembled for the festival: Scott Foppiano, Walt Strony, Peter Richard Conte, Fred Hohman, Fred Swann, John Weaver, and Municipal Organist Ray Cornils. (Felix Hell and Tom Trenney had left the festival early because of other concert engagements.)

A couple of hours later, the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ hosted a Gala Centennial Banquet attended by about two hundred people. And on Wednesday evening, we enjoyed the Centennial Concert played by Ray Cornils, Peter Richard Conte, and the Kotzschmar Festival Brass. You can see the festival schedule, the specifications of the organ, and learn the history of the organ and of the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ at the website, www.foko.org.

I serve on the board of directors of the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ, where I am chairman of the organ committee. Seems natural enough, doesn’t it, that someone serving as a volunteer on the board of a not-for-profit organization would take a role from his professional life? But there’s something very funny about it. Throughout more than 35 years working as an organbuilder, I’ve been involved in hundreds of conversations with organ committees from all sorts of institutions, but always as an organbuilder, as a contractor, never as the “customer.” Since the conversation about renovating the Kotzschmar Organ started early in 2007, I’ve been on the other side of the table. The organ committee and I prepared requests for proposals and sent them to a list of organbuilding firms, we reviewed and compared the various proposals we received, chose the contractor, and spent many hours in conference with the staff of Foley-Baker planning the project. It was an extraordinary learning experience, rounding out my understanding of the process of conception and planning of a major organ project, and I am grateful to Foley-Baker, the organ committee, and all my colleagues on the FOKO board for this very rich experience.

Wait, wait, when can we work? 

Planning the schedule of this project has been unusually delicate. Merrill Auditorium is a grand home not only for this wonderful organ, but for many other activities as well. It is home to the Portland Symphony Orchestra, the Choral Arts Society, the Portland Opera, and the Portland Ballet. (How many cities of 66,000 people can boast such a lineup?)  Each year, many high schools, colleges, and universities hold their graduation exercises there, most of them accompanied by the organ. The City of Portland uses the auditorium for meetings and conferences, and very importantly, the hall is the premier venue in the State of Maine for all sorts of cultural activities, from rock concerts to comedians, from classical musicians to this summer’s live sell-out production of National Public Radio’s ubiquitous favorite show, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me! That means two things—thousands of people throng from all over the state to hear this wide variety of events, and the rental of the hall for high-profile programs is of primary importance to the operating budget of the auditorium.

The second major factor defining the delicacy of the schedule is the fact that it’s difficult to maintain an audience in a dark hall. The Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ have cultivated an enthusiastic audience for the organ, comprising many local enthusiasts and countless tourists who plan their visits to Portland to coincide with concerts at Merrill Auditorium. How to maintain the presence of the organ and nourish the audience during its approximately twenty months of absence is the question that FOKO has been grappling with since the beginning of the conversation.

The five-week period necessary for the removal of the organ must have been the largest single block of time reserved since the hall was reopened after its renovation in 1997, for which the organ had been removed from the building.

A few paragraphs ago, I mentioned that the conversation about the renovation of the organ started in 2007, just ten years after the Kotzschmar Organ was installed in Merrill Auditorium for the second time. As the auditorium had received a thorough facelift that included new theater seats, a renewed acoustical environment, and a new and larger stage equipped with all the machinery and gear necessary to support complicated theatrical productions, you can imagine that there was much fanfare about the organ’s return to the hall having been cleaned, repaired, and modified to fit the new environment. In fact, the word “restoration” had been used.  

When early in 2007, FOKO’s organ committee reported to the full board that the organ’s condition merited a thorough and very expensive overhaul, there was an eerie silence in the room. The next sound came from a board member who correctly commented, “I thought we restored the organ when the hall was rebuilt.”

In August 2007, FOKO hosted a symposium, inviting seven acknowledged pipe organ experts to visit and inspect the organ and participate in several days of both private and public conversation. Theatre organist Walt Strony, Thomas Murray, Joseph Dzeda, and Nicholas Thompson-Allen of Yale University, Peter Richard Conte and Curt Mangel of the Wanamaker Organ, and organ consultant and historian Jonathan Ambrosino were the invited guests. Craig Whitney of the New York Times, and author of All the Stops (PublicAffairs, 2003), served as scribe for the public round-table discussion. The result of the symposium was a unanimous recommendation by the participants that FOKO commission a professional survey of the organ’s condition, which would serve as the basis for a request for proposals for the renovation of the organ. Five years later, as I write today, the organ is being dismantled for its multi-million-dollar renovation.

The tricky “R’s” . . . 

From the very beginning of five years of conversations, FOKO board members have referred to this project as a renovation. In the world of the preservation of antiquities, the word restoration should be used very carefully. The word implies returning an artifact to its condition when brand new. If the Kotzschmar Organ were being restored, the five-manual console built in 2000 would be removed and the original either repurchased and restored (with its mechanical “ka-chunk” one-level combination action) or faithfully reconstructed, and the significant voices added by Austin in the 1920s (and paid for by Cyrus Curtis) would be removed. While the original organ was a glorious instrument, the various additions and modifications have improved the instrument for modern use by myriad artists.

The current project includes a faithful reproduction of the original Austin Universal Air Chest, which was significantly modified during the 1995–97 project, replacement of pipe valves and pneumatic note-motors with authentic parts supplied by the Austin Organ Company, and the addition of two new 32-foot voices. It would be inaccurate to refer to this project as a restoration. We believe that the effect, aura, and ethic of the original Austin organ will be retained and the essential character of the organ will not be changed. 

The centennial star parade

The Kotzschmar Centennial Festival was a brilliant convocation. The array of visiting artists was inspirational. It was both fun and rewarding to meet with the visiting faithful, many of whom were not professionals, but people so dedicated to the thrill of the pipe organ that traveling hundreds of miles to spend a summer week sitting in churches, conference rooms, and a concert hall is a joy. It was both thrilling and moving to see how the people of Portland came out to celebrate and support their most visible cultural icon. And in the light of all that, enriching for me to have such a broad opportunity to visit with my colleagues who have so much to offer on stage and at table.  

Felix Hell gave us a brilliant performance of Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on Ad nos ad salutarem undam. After the concert I caught a glimpse of John Weaver and Felix Hell embracing, the epitome of the deep experience between mentor and student. I’ve had many conversations with great teachers about the joy of working with gifted students, and that which I had with John Weaver at breakfast a couple days later was a classic about how a great performer takes what he learned from his teachers and builds on it as he matures as a performer and develops his vision of a given piece.

Thomas Heywood (www.concert
organ.com) travels the world with his wife Simone, who assists him at the console for his performances, and manages his career. Thomas has the hands and feet of a conjurer, allowing him to play fiendish passages, especially those in his own transcriptions, with abandon and most notably, joy. He bounds onto the stage as if he were winning an Oscar, then jumps on the bench and dazzles. He tested the repetition rate of the organ’s aging action with his reading of the Overture to William Tell.

Fred Swann and John Weaver shared a recital on Tuesday night, August 21. While we celebrate the brilliant young players who are bringing new life to the pipe organ, the opportunity to hear two such masters play on the same evening is to recall the majesty, dignity, and depth of musical interpretation that can only be achieved through a lifetime of practice, study, and thousands of performances. I doubt that anyone in the hall failed to recognize the significance of that collaboration.

Tom Trenney, Scott Foppiano, and Walt Strony helped us appreciate the versatility of the Kotzschmar Organ, which presents itself architecturally as a formal concert organ, but with its array of percussions like Harp, Marimba, Glockenspiel, drums, and Turkish Cymbal, can easily jump the line between the classical and the popular. Tom accompanied the silent film, Speedy, and Scott and Walt gave varied and colorful performances that showcased the widest ranges of the organ’s resources, and their creative and colorful personalities.

Fred Hohman honored the memory of one of Portland’s early municipal organists by playing transcriptions and original compositions by Edwin Lemare, whose virtuosity impressed early twentieth-century audiences, and whose creativity in understanding the capabilities of the organ console is still educating concert organists.

I’ve written before in the pages of this journal that I suspect Peter Richard Conte to be armed with universal joints in his fingers rather than the more usual “up-and-down” knuckles that hamper the rest of us. As an audience member sitting 100 feet from the console in the Grand Tier of the auditorium, I heard sweeping performances of familiar orchestral scores. As a friend who has often stood next to Peter as he plays, I know he’s capable of playing on four keyboards simultaneously while playing two independent parts on the pedalboard. You think it’s super-human and impossible until you see it up close.

Ray Cornils has served Portland as municipal organist since 1990. He, like Hermann Kotzschmar, must be the premier musician of the City of Portland and the State of Maine. His rapport with city officials, board members, and with the audience is a joy to witness, and his approach to his role, complete with sparkling costumes and a smooth croon of a voice as he addresses the audience at Merrill Auditorium, speaks of his understanding and appreciation of the role of leader of the city’s music.

Say good night, Gracie.  

During the last piece of the centennial concert, attentive audience members noticed a light turning on inside the organ, and several people sneaking across the organ behind the façade pipes. As the audience stood in ovation, Ray and Peter slid back onto the bench and launched into a fresh four-hands arrangement of Auld Lang Syne. The entire staff of Foley-Baker, Inc., some twenty strong in suits and hard hats, walked onto the stage with a huge stepladder, and started removing façade pipes as the audience sang and wept.

All this about a pipe organ? The pipe organ is the most complex of musical instruments, the most expensive, and the most difficult to care for. Organs are subject to the whims of weather, politics, and the global economy (try to solicit a leading gift from a donor whose portfolio has just crashed). For many, they are the symbol of lost ages, the ultimate icon of the dead white man. They are the timeless symbol of the church, which compels an ever-decreasing percentage of our population.

Portland, Maine has ponied up $1,250,000 to care for its treasure. Can your town, county, state, or nation be persuaded to do the same? Never, never take pipe organs for granted.

Notes

1. Edward Bulwer-Litton, Paul Clifford (opening line), published by Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, London, 1830. It is widely quoted as an example of “Purple Prose” celebrating the worst extremes in writing:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

2. Behind the Pipes: The Story of the Kotzschmar Organ, Janice Parkinson-Tucker, Casco House, 2005, pp. 2–3.

3. Lima Daily News, Lima, Ohio, January 24, 1908 (http://www.gendisasters.com/data1/me/fires/portland-cityhall1908.htm)

4. Behind the Pipes, p. 14.

Organs for the people

The early twentieth century was the golden age of the municipal organist. Dozens of cities across the United States installed monumental organs in public auditoriums, and brilliant organists were hired to play them, paid with public funds. Those were days when the economics of symphony orchestras limited attendance to the top-hat and sable-stole crowd, so in the days before radio, the general public might not ever have a chance to hear a Beethoven symphony or Rossini overture.

That was also the age of rapid development of electric organ actions and a dizzying display of registration aids. Just as Aristide Cavaillé-Coll’s organs changed the work and scope of musicians and composers 60 years earlier, Ernest Skinner and others were baring their engineering teeth and festooning their consoles with swell shade selectors, programmable crescendos, and settable combination actions with general pistons. Great ideas for new console controls came along, such as super couplers that didn’t affect high-pitch stops and cutouts that would shut off all mutations.

In the 1920s, the populace of Chattanooga, Tennessee, or Topeka, Kansas, would gather loyally each week at their big municipal auditorium to be treated to a varied performance by a great organist. The immense popularity of such concerts was described by Cleveland city architect Harold MacDowell, who wrote after the dedication concert of the 149-rank Skinner organ in that city’s 13,000-seat Public Auditorium in 1922:

Despite the oppressive heat, the crowd which had been collecting since noon soon exceeded the capacity of the mammoth hall and long before the time set for the inaugural recital all seats were filled and more than 5000 men, women, and children were crowding the corridors of the colossal structure. The police which were out in large numbers were at first able to hold the crowd into a semblance of order, but soon gave up in despair as the eager mob swept all before it.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a riot before an organ recital.

City Hall in Portland, Maine, was destroyed by a calamitous fire in January 1908 that started, ironically, in the new-fangled electric fire alarm system in the office of the city electrician. The city fathers (there were no women in government then) wasted no time, hiring Carèrre & Hastings, who had famously designed the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, and the new City Hall was ready for dedication in August 1912.

Concurrently, the publishing magnate, Portland native Cyrus H. K. Curtis, made a gift of a hundred-stop Austin organ for the auditorium of the city hall. Curtis’s father had invited Hermann Kotzschmar to move to Portland where he established himself as the most prominent musician, influencing generations of Portlandians through his tireless work and brilliant performances. The friendship between Curtis’s father and Kotzschmar was so strong that he named his son Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis, and Cyrus H. K. Curtis in turn dedicated the organ to Kotzschmar. During the dedication ceremony of city hall and the organ on August 22, 1912, Curtis addressed the assembled crowd:

Mr. Mayor,

I present to the City of Portland through you, this memorial to Hermann Kotzschmar, who for more than fifty years was pre-eminent in this city as organist, composer, and teacher, a man who was loved by all classes for his kindly spirit, his high ideals, and his devotion to music.

He cared little or nothing for material things or fame—he never sought them, but here is his monument­—a monument to one who did something to make us better men and women and to appreciate that indefinable something that is an expression of the soul.

The great William C. Macfarlane was engaged as Portland’s first municipal organist, and a city music commission was formed. Macfarlane served from 1912 until 1918 and returned for a second stint between 1932 and 1934. Edwin H. Lemare, another musical luminary, served from 1921 to 1923.

In the 1970s, municipal funds were dwindling, and the maintenance of the organ suffered until 1980 when the city council voted to stop funding the organ. A group of interested citizens came forth in 1981, founding the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ (FOKO), which would develop a board of directors and assume responsibility for the care and presentation of the organ. The organ would remain the property of the city, and a carefully crafted relationship was formed and nurtured that has endured to this day.

In the 1990s, the auditorium was to be renovated and modernized, and the Kotzschmar Organ was removed to storage. This was a critical moment in the life of the organ, as once it was in storage, there were voices in town that would have been pleased if the organ had not been returned to the new hall. Through FOKO’s tireless devotion, funds were raised to install the organ in a specially built space above the stage in the newly renamed Merrill Auditorium.

Most importantly, it was the effort of David Wallace, the organ’s curator, who was dedicated to seeing the organ brought back to life, even though proper funding was not available. It was that effort that made possible FOKO’s crowning achievement, the Centennial Renovation. After 30 years of tireless maintenance of the reinstalled organ, an ambitious fundraising project was undertaken, and on August 22, 2012, the one-hundredth anniversary of the dedication of the organ and the hall, the Kotzschmar Organ was removed for a second time, this time for transportation to the workshop of Foley-Baker, Inc., in Tolland, Connecticut, for a thorough, professional renovation. A few new voices were added, the Austin Universal Air Chest was replaced with a new one of authentic design, returning the instrument to its original dimensions. The electrical system was replaced, damaged pipes were repaired, and the organ now speaks with clarity and brilliance as if it were brand new.

A twenty-first century municipal
organist

Ray Cornils was educated at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music and held positions as organist at various churches in the Boston area until he and his partner, now husband, David Bellville, felt an urge to move to Maine. Ray secured the position of director of music at First Parish in Brunswick, Maine, in 1987, and in 1990 was appointed the eleventh municipal organist of Portland.

Following the final concert of 2017, Cornils retired from the position in Portland. He had retired from First Parish in June, and with all those responsibilities behind him, he and David retreated to their home on the beach in Salinas, Ecuador. Salinas is at the tip of a peninsula that juts into the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of Ecuador, right near the equator. Ray and David also have a home in Quichinche, high in the Andes, an hour or so north of the capitol city, Quito (altitude 9,500 feet), ten hours from Salinas, and they have retained their home in Maine. I caught up with Cornils by Skype the other day and spent a pleasant hour and more chatting about FOKO. He described his current state as “taking a deep breath” and learning to live without the relentless responsibilities of those two demanding positions.

When Cornils was appointed municipal organist, FOKO was nearly ten years old and growing steadily in organization and effectiveness. The annual budget was around $20,000, and the condition of the Kotzschmar Organ was in steady decline. Ray acknowledged the organ’s terrible condition as “. . . a given. You registered music with handfuls of stops because there were so many dead notes.” Some stops worked sporadically because of worn and unreliable contacts. The roar of the basement blower joined the chorus of thousands of wind leaks in the organ on the stage to create a high level of ambient noise, so that when the organ was used with the Portland Symphony Orchestra, it was turned off during rests because the musicians of the orchestra objected to the extraneous noise.

On several occasions, the organ failed completely. When Pierre Pincemaille was preparing for a recital, the huge organ blower “threw its fans.” After years of torque from starting the heavy machine, the rivets were worn, and when they failed, torn sheet metal blew through the windlines into the big windchest. It must have made quite a noise. And there was David Wallace to dismantle the blower and take the fans to a local sheet metal company that fabricated new vanes overnight, and though Pincemaille only had a few hours to prepare, the concert went on as scheduled.¹

Ray spoke of the challenges of communicating with an organ that was operating at such a low level. FOKO was working diligently to keep the organ going, but the instrument was unraveling. After the organ was reinstalled following the renovation of the auditorium, the press heralded the triumphant return of the “restored” Kotzschmar Organ. While the organ had not, in fact, been restored, its condition was substantially improved, allowing a fresh start for programming. Cornils resumed the work of inviting prominent organists to present recitals, serving as the tireless and gracious host as he introduced them to the organ.

When I asked Ray what impact the position had on him over the years, he answered, “the ability to listen.” To listen to reactions of the audience to the artists and music being presented. To listen to the input of lay people serving on the FOKO board as they commented on what sells and what doesn’t. To listen to himself as he spoke at meetings, as he conducted the relationship with the city, and as he addressed audiences about the music he was playing. To listen to his playing, trying always to be a growing musician and effective communicator. To listen to the organ, responding to what it seemed to be able to do best. And to listen to the guest artists, noticing what they were able to get out of the organ and how they did it.

It is unusual for an organist to get to hear their home organ played regularly by different people. It is more usual that the “home” organist of a church never hears anyone else playing the organ, which is often not to the advantage of the listener. Ray spoke at length about the value of that part of his work. It’s a challenge for any organist to arrive in town with a few days to prepare a concert on a strange organ, especially one that’s not in terrific condition.

Professionals in the pipe organ community are a tiny subset of society, and Cornils worked to find ways to connect the organ world with the real world. He encouraged guest artists to address their audiences, and instituted preconcert conversations in which he would interview a musician, allowing for more personal contact between artists and audiences. Late in his tenure, FOKO began publishing brief videos on social media featuring guest artists playing selections from their program and speaking about what excited them about the music and the experience of playing in Merrill Auditorium.

Cornils was always mindful of the heritage of the Kotzschmar Organ. The instrument was presented to the city by a music lover who had been moved by the work of a prominent local musician, a moving response to an artist’s life work. Ray understood the responsibility of honoring and nurturing that heritage by keeping the Kotzschmar Organ in front of the public and always showing its best side, no matter what particular foibles it presented on a given day.

During his tenure, Cornils was active in and devoted to FOKO’s educational outreach. He spoke of the rich rewards of working with children in public schools and working with the teachers to plan curriculums that melded into the other topics discussed in the classroom. He made an effort to pick up on the sorts of vocabulary the class was used to and to tie the marvels of the organ into scientific, historical, and artistic conversations. He recognized that many people experience the sound of the organ as scary because of its use in popular horror films and other media. Ray enjoyed sharing the organ’s joyful, triumphant, meditative, and tuneful sides with the students, and some of his highest moments were when parents greeted him after concerts saying that their kids had experienced FOKO in their classrooms and encouraged the family to come to Merrill Auditorium to hear the organ in person.

§

The Centennial Renovation was a crowning achievement of the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ, and Cornils’s well-known humility would never allow him to claim credit for it. It was a magnificent effort put forth by an active group of volunteers serving on the board, supported by the generous donations from the public. But Ray’s decades of service, his unflappability, his gracious and thoughtful presence as FOKO negotiated the relationship with the city, and his continuous presence on stage and in public as the voice of FOKO, the ambassador for the organ, and an artistic leader in the city were central to the success of the project. His voice and artistry helped make the Kotzschmar Organ a worthy recipient of the hundreds of private donations involved in funding that ambitious project.

It was fitting that Cornils’s tenure extended after the completion of the renovation. After the thrilling festival of rededication, Ray was on the bench of the Kotzschmar Organ for three years until his retirement. Now, guest artists gush their enthusiasm about the organ’s transformation, especially those who had played it before the renovation. And Ray had time to learn the organ’s new strengths and to experience afresh those voices that had been unusable. The original personality of the organ reemerged under Ray’s fingers, and the public was delighted.

On December 22, 2017, Ray made his last appearance in Merrill Auditorium as municipal organist in the city of Portland. Over the years, “Christmas with Cornils” programs had developed into a seasonal highpoint for the community, and predictably, the 1,600-seat hall was filled. Ray was joined by an 11-piece brass choir, percussion, chorus, and handbells for a rollicking romp through beloved holiday repertory. At intermission, Ethan Strimling, mayor of Portland, presented Ray with a key to the city. Ray responded to the audience’s ovation by saying, “This is not goodbye, it’s thank you.”

During the concert, Cornils was aware that his successor, James Kennerley, was present in the hall. At the end of the evening, without prompt and without plan, Ray invited James to join him on stage, signaling to the audience his support of the future, and generously giving James and the audience a chance to see each other. No one who has worked with Ray as student, colleague, peer, or collaborator would be surprised to learn that Ray’s last public gesture as municipal organist of the city of Portland would be one of humility and generosity.

Some people might assume that the role of the municipal organist would be to present a haughty, theatrical demeanor. That was not Ray’s way, and the city of Portland is a better because of his 27 years on that bench.

Notes

1. Ray’s telling of that story was especially poignant as Pierre Pincemaille had passed away on January 12, the day before my converastion with Ray Cornils.