“There are hundreds and hundreds of pipes, valves and magnets, along with miles and miles of wire,” he said. “The organ here was not getting a lot of use and it kind of deteriorated.”Ī team of specialists from the Piedmont Theater Organ Society poured “several hundred hours” of work into the project, according to Andersen. “There’s probably less than 100 of these left in theaters throughout the world, when at one point there were thousands and thousands of them,” Andersen said. The civic center’s organ was rescued from a demolished theater in Durham. Many of the instruments spent decades collecting dust in theater basements and fell into disrepair. Why pay a small army of musicians when you can hire just one?īut demand for the organs quickly faded after talkies were introduced. Cinema owners found a much cheaper alternative in the versatile organ.
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The instruments were a staple of early movie palaces, which had once employed large orchestras to provide music and sound effects during silent films. Serendipitously, Andersen retired to Lumberton as the Carolina Civic Center was in the process of resuscitating its Wurlitzer-style pipe organ. “My hope is that they will stand the test of time and remain in the repertory forever,” he said. He describes his own work as being highly melodic and similar to “the compositions you would remember from mainline composers.” “She really nurtured that part of the creative musician,” he said.Ī two-time winner of the International Composer’s Competition in Amsterdam, Andersen has released 32 albums of original music through International Artists Records, a subsidiary of the nonprofit that produces his television show. It was Reynolds who encouraged the fledgling pianist’s interest in composition. She turned out some quite remarkable artists.” “The thing that was so great about her is that she found the inner-talent in her students and let them grow into their own pathways. “She was by far the finest piano teacher in the state of North Carolina for many years,” he said of Reynolds, who died in 1990. “My parents took a train to his studio in Chicago and they went over the plans,” Andersen said.Īt age 5, Andersen began taking piano lessons from the late Evelyn Reynolds. The white-brick building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, an American architect known for his aggressively modern style. The son of a furniture salesman, Andersen grew up in one of Robeson County’s most recognizable houses. Viewers in some television markets may recognize him as the host of “Crescendo!,” an award-winning performing arts program about to begin its ninth season. The multi-instrumentalist has since performed with the Boston Symphony and worked as an arranger for NBC. More than 50 years have passed since Andersen left his hometown to study music at a conservatory in Chicago.
“Being an East Coast boy at heart, it just feels more comfortable,” he said. He decided to retire here with his partner after spending a decade in Seattle, where he was the artist in residence at Daniels Recital Hall. It took a pair of U-Haul trucks to deliver the 1,200-pound organ to Andersen’s childhood home in Lumberton. “From Radio City Music Hall in New York to many of the community theaters across America, the Wurlitzer sound was the one held in highest esteem.” “There is always one company that stands out as the Rolls Royce in its field,” Andersen said. He says it is “by far the largest of its kind in North Carolina.” The instruments are hidden in chambers and played through a latticework of pipes and valves.Īndersen’s organ, a Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra model, was assembled using parts from four of the more than 2,000 units built by Wurlitzer during the 1920s.
Sitting behind the theater organ’s horseshoe-shaped console, Andersen can call up actual instruments like orchestra bells, castanets, drums and marimba. On paper, it sounds more like a Rube Goldberg contraption. The Robeson County native says that people often mistake the rare instrument for a synthesizer.
LUMBERTON - It would take a 70-piece orchestra to play the range of instruments that Mark Andersen can juggle on his prized Wurlitzer organ.
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