As the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall celebrates its 150th birthday and the completion of a year-long renovation, a different celebration of the venue’s legendary organ is set for the end of the month.
Today, the acoustics inside Troy Savings Bank Music Hall are world-famous, though that wasn’t always the case.
“It wasn't famously good when the Hall opened in 1875 it was when this organ was installed in 1890 that people noted the acoustics changing. It's because of the sort of shell that exists underneath the organ. So, it sort of acts as a natural amplifier,” said Adam Tinkle.
Adam Tinkle is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, and Skidmore College professor. He’s spent a lot of time with the so-called “king of instruments” over the past year through his residency at the venue.
Tinkle’s time at the music hall coincided with a massive overhaul of the space – the $14.5 million investment has transformed the bottom floors of the building into the Capital Region Music Hub and overhauled its HVAC system.
“Acoustics are simply the way air bounces around the room. We're changing the way air is moving through the space with this air handling system. And of course, an organ is an air handling system, and an HVAC system is an organ. It's ideally a very, very quiet one,” said Tinkle.
Tinkle has no formal training to play an organ, let alone one with three rows of keys, or manuals, two octaves worth of pedals and about 50 stops.
“This may be one of the few on the hemisphere that is like, all the leather, all the wood, all the parts inside the organ are original to 1880s,” said Tinkle.
He’s spent months preparing a concert centering around the organ.
“When I started working with this organ, a lot of things were plainly not working, and that was known. It's unclear exactly when the slide happened, but people say that, starting from the 1960s it wasn't exactly in concert ready condition. So, the whole idea behind this concert is to figure out what this organ still can do, despite the fact that it can't do everything that it could do when it was first made, and build an evening of music around the things that it still can do,” said Tinkle.
For Tinkle, an improvisational artist at heart, the organ’s irregularities were hardly a burden – there are layers of multi-colored tape that detail his journey to understand the century-old instrument.
“So, red means does not work. Pink means works with quirks. Other colors refer to their sort of mnemonic for timbers. So, the darkest timbers are purple, medium are blue, brightest are green. And then I'm using orange and yellow to indicate things in, sort of in my score, if you will,” said Tinkle.
And, if you ask nicely, Tinkle will happily share some of the peculiarities he’s found.
“If you give this one a little extra force—that's not what an organ is supposed to do,” said Tinkle.
The concert will show off everything Tinkle has learned about the organ over the past year, irregularities and all.
“It can make whistly sounds that almost sound like the weather. It can make towering, powerful, crushing, heavy metal, brassy, thick harmonies. And we're also going to hear the organ combine with string and wind instruments as well,” said Tinkle.
Tinkle says the organ never plays exactly the same way twice, so this concert will be a truly unique, site-specific experience.
“I am really excited when I find those aspects of what it does that are specific to it and that tell a story of its movement through time. And I think that's essentially what we're gathering to do, is I'm not trying to show off or share my like chops, or it's not about specific chords or melodies, or it's about the sensory experience of listening to time and to the past and to how things from the past are still with us. And so, I'll be doing a lot of listening. I'll be laying down a lot of chords and looking for listening for those things that only this organ is doing, and maybe even those things that this organ is doing today, and it might not ever do again.” said Tinkle.
Tinkle's organ odyssey, "All That’s Solid Melts into Wiggling Air" is set for March 31 at 7 p.m.
