The organ in the ballpark/church/today's paper

[maren]

Wilbur Snapp, 83, Organist Ejected by Ump, Dies

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SOUTH PASADENA, Fla., Sept. 9 (AP) — Wilbur Snapp, a minor league baseball organist who drew national attention after an umpire ejected him for playing "Three Blind Mice" in protest of a call, died Saturday at Palms of Pasadena Hospital. He was 83.

Mr. Snapp played "Three Blind Mice" during a game in 1985 after what he considered to be a bad call against the minor league Clearwater Phillies at Jack Russell Stadium. Not amused, the umpire pointed up at Mr. Snapp, then ejected him from the game.

Mr. Snapp's ejection brought phone calls from around the country. Willard Scott, the weatherman, mentioned it on NBC's "Today" show, and Paul Harvey talked about it on his syndicated radio program.

Fans sought his autograph, and he signed it "Wilbur Snapp, Three Blind Mice organist."

Mr. Snapp taught himself the organ when he was 35 and could not read music. He lived in St. Petersburg and provided the music at Philadelphia Phillies games throughout spring training and for minor league games throughout the summer.

He continued to go to games even after Jack Russell Stadium switched to recorded music and dismissed him in 1997.

He came to Florida in 1978 from Springfield, Ohio, where he ran a music store. He was a World War II Army Air Forces veteran.

He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Janice; a son; a daughter; and five grandchildren.

[Jim Alfredson]

What a great story! I've never heard it. Thank you!

[maren]

The Pipes Are Gone but the Organ Resounds

By JAMES R. OESTREICH (from the New York Times)

Concert settings around the city for decades have had to endure the shake, rattle and rumble of subways passing nearby. The new Zankel Hall — in the Carnegie Hall basement, with a subway nine feet away — will soon carry the skirmish to a new front, reportedly well defended with sound insulation.

But the historic Trinity Church, at the foot of Wall Street, is preparing to fight back.

"We'll be rattling the subways," said Owen Burdick, the church's director of music, as he listened to a mighty crescendo in an early test of an innovative digital organ, just built and installed there by Marshall & Ogletree of Needham Heights, Mass. The instrument replaces the church's old Aeolian Skinner pipe organ, which was all but destroyed in the attacks of Sept. 11. The church lies a mere 200 yards from ground zero, and the building itself suffered remarkably little damage. But it was permeated with a thick coating of dust and grime, which corroded organ parts made of leather and other vulnerable materials.

The Aeolian Skinner now lies dismantled in storage, pending an insurance settlement at least a year off. (One item in issue, apparently, is how much of the dust predated the attacks and how much was caused by them; a "doctor of dust," in Mr. Burdick's phrase, was brought in to examine the layers.) Rebuilding the instrument, or building a new pipe organ, would probably take an additional three to five years, Mr. Burdick said, while affirming the church's intention to do one or the other eventually.

"This is an elegant interim solution," he said of the Marshall & Ogletree instrument.

The organ will make its public debut tomorrow evening at 7 in a performance of William Albright's oratorio "A Song to David," for chorus, soloists, narrators and organ. Mr. Burdick will conduct and Dean Billmeyer will be the organist. The performance will be broadcast live on WQXR-FM and streamed on WQXR.com. (WQXR is owned by The New York Times Company.)

The Trinity congregation has limped along since the church reopened in November 2001 with a jury-rigged system of electronic keyboards and synthesizers. "We call it the Toaster," Mr. Burdick said, evoking a term used by pipe organ aficionados to dismiss electronic organs generally.

Electronic organs, to be sure, don't get much respect from music professionals. But if Trinity's new instrument is not your grandfather's pipe organ, neither is it your father's electronic organ.

Mr. Burdick, who has long been involved in electronic music, joined the Marshall & Ogletree builders at the drawing board. Their goal was to produce the best instrument that could be conceived within current technological limits if price were no object.

The resulting prototype relies not on one computer but on 10 of them. It also deploys 74 large speakers — set in ranks, like organ pipes — and six refrigerator-size subwoofers.

"It's one hell of a stereo system," Mr. Burdick said.

[Jim Alfredson]

Ah, the quick fix. Indicative of our society, no?

It's been two years. The organ probably would've been all but rebuilt by now. It's a damn shame.

[maren]

Another installment for this apparently private thread between me and Mr. JA III (nice pictures in the actual paper --sorry I couldn't find them online):

Last Notes of His Gig, National Pastime Swing

By Corey Kilgannon in the New York Times, October 10, 2003

Up in the loge section of Yankee Stadium, behind home plate, there is a small glass booth wedged between the press box and the scoreboard control area.

A sign on the door reads, "Do not disturb while game is in progress." But it was three hours before game time on Wednesday, the opener in the American League Championship Series between the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, and the man in the glass room, Eddie Layton, was taking visitors, mostly sportswriters and team officials offering early farewells.

Mr. Layton has been playing the organ for Yankee home games since 1967, but this season — his 37th — is his final one. He says he will retire after the Yankees win the World Series this month. "You notice I said, `win the World Series,' " he said. "That's tongue in cheek."

Pessimists might note that Mr. Layton's career could be over next week, and then he would not get another World Series ring to add to his collection.

Wearing his trademark oversize glasses, captain's hat and long scarf, Mr. Layton sat on his padded bench next to a dog-eared pile of sheet music. He lighted a cigarette and watched the Yankees warm up on the field. Smoking is prohibited in ballparks, but Mr. Layton lights up with impunity. His ashtray is tucked in the upper-right-hand corner of the organ console, and the high-register keys are dusted with ash. The wood on the old Hammond organ, with its two keyboards and foot pedals, is battered and bruised but the instrument still sounds swell. The multicolored switches, knobs and levers have long been set to elicit what might be called national pastime swing. "If I turned this baby up, they could hear me on the George Washington Bridge," Mr. Layton said.

In front of him, technicians operated the stadium's huge scoreboard. Their stacks of computer components grow ever taller around Mr. Layton's time capsule of an organ booth.

"Every year," he said, "more technology."

There was a time when it was up to Mr. Layton to lead the cheers and rock the stadium crowd. But much of that is now done with recorded music. The loudspeakers regularly pump the sounds of 50 Cent and Jay-Z: names with which Mr. Layton is not familiar.

"I've had my day," he said. "Playing with 50,000 watts of power, what rock star has an amplifier like that? I play for up to 56,000 people a night. Not even Madonna has done those kind of numbers."

Mr. Layton has become friendly with many of the Yankee players and leadership over the years, including Phil Rizzuto and Mickey Mantle. He tells a story about the Yankees' principal owner, George Steinbrenner, playing the stadium organ and asking Mr. Layton what he thought of his keyboard prowess. Mr. Layton recalled that he completed the role reversal by saying, "George, you're fired."

He added that Mr. Steinbrenner had just dropped by and said, " `Eddie, I'm going to miss you.' "

Mr. Layton is in his late 70's — "Approaching middle age," is as specific as he will get — and lives alone in his apartment in Forest Hills, Queens. He has played home games for the Rangers, Knicks and Islanders during the baseball off-season, but he calls Yankee Stadium "my second home."

A studied musician and composer ("I could score a laundry list if I had to"), Mr. Layton was playing background organ music for soap operas in the 1960's when a team official invited him to become the stadium organist. Mr. Layton, who grew up in Philadelphia and has never driven a car, said he did not want to take late-night subway rides. The official offered him limousine service to and from the games and Mr. Layton accepted. During his first game, Mickey Mantle hit a home run. The organist asked a sportswriter why the Mick was rounding the bases in the wrong direction."I had never watched baseball before," he said. He was told to just play a few catchy tunes between innings, but he soon took to improvising to the onfield drama and stoking chants in the bleachers and singing in the stands.

Of his World Series rings, he wears the smallest one, from 1978. The others are so heavy that he risks playing a clam, or a wrong note, while wearing it. "Most people can't tell you've played a clam, unless you play it during the national anthem," he said. "That you don't do."

With a life booked solid with gigs, he said, there was never any time to marry or start a family, "and to this day I don't regret it." He does find time for boating on his 26-foot miniature tugboat docked on the Hudson in Tarrytown, N.Y.

Bob Sheppard, the Yankees' longtime public-address announcer, sits in a booth next to Mr. Layton's and drops him off at home after games. Both men always arrive several hours before game time and take advantage of the $4 hot dinner special offered to employees.

Mr. Layton was disappointed that only box lunches were being offered on Wednesday, because the media crowd was enormous. As he considered his droopy turkey sandwich, he looked tired and possibly ready for retirement after all.

He lowered himself gingerly onto his bench and began a prancing version of "New York, New York."

"It all gets to be a bit repetitious," he allowed. "That's one reason I'm leaving." He watched his words being written down and added, "But it's always fun."

[Jim Alfredson]

Is this the same Eddie Layton from this pic?

I had no idea he was the Yankee's organist. That's very cool. Actually, I had no idea anyone even employed organists in baseball anymore. I figured it would be all pre-recorded music.

Thanks for the story, maren!

[maren]

Is this the same Eddie Layton from this pic?

Forty-odd years later, there appears to be a strong resemblance!! If I can't scan the newspaper photo, I'll mail you a copy!

Wonder whether they'll hire an actual organist again next season? Unlikely, I'm afraid, but it would be cool...

[maren]

The one and the same Eddie Layton, according to http://www.spaceagepop.com/layton.htm

[Jim Alfredson]

That's really cool! I wonder if he was playing a newer or older Hammond. By the way the guy describes it, it sounds like a newer model, not a B3 but you never know. The B3 can look exotic to those that know nothing about it.

[maren]

Dirk Flentrop, Builder of Organs, Dies at 93

By Craig R. Whitney, New York Times, 12/14/03

Dirk A. Flentrop, a Dutch organ builder who influenced a generation of American counterparts in making pipe organs that play and sound like the classical Baroque instruments of Bach's time, died at his home in Santpoort, the Netherlands, on Nov. 30, his company, Flentrop Orgelbouw, announced. He was 93.

Mr. Flentrop headed the company, which is based in Zaandam, from 1940 to 1976. He took over from his father, Hendrik Flentrop, an organist who founded the company in 1903.

Inspired by what his father had learned in restoring 17th- and 18th-century European instruments, Mr. Flentrop, who also played the organ, built hundreds of new instruments in the Netherlands and elsewhere using historical construction techniques — mechanical connections between keys and pipes, bright and clear tones, elegant wooden cases to focus sound.

His influence spread to the United States in 1958, thanks to his friend E. Power Biggs, the concert organist, whom Mr. Flentrop had guided on a tour of European Baroque organs in 1954.

Most American pipe organs in the mid-20th century were being made with remote-control electropneumatic playing action and pipes that often imitated the sounds of the orchestra — unresponsive and heavy sounding, to Mr. Biggs's ears. He ordered an organ from Mr. Flentrop and in 1958 got permission to install it in Adolphus Busch Hall at Harvard University.

The Flentrop organ in Busch Hall, still frequently heard in concerts, became, in the words of the organ historian Jonathan Ambrosino, "the beacon of a new age."

Mr. Biggs's recordings on it, and his fervent advocacy of designing pipe organs along classical lines, brought scores of orders for Mr. Flentrop over the next 20 years from American churches and universities. Among the places where he installed notable instruments are St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle, the conservatory at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and the Duke University chapel in Durham, N.C.

His instruments helped inspire such American builders as Charles B. Fisk, John Brombaugh and Fritz Noack and their followers to return to traditional methods.

The Flentrop company, now directed by Cees van Oostenbrugge, observed its 100th anniversary this year.

Mr. Flentrop is survived by his wife, Cynthia Flentrop-Turner; a daughter, Agaath Leeuwerik-Flentrop; and three grandchildren.

Dirk A. Flentrop [A.G.O. Organ Library]