Amazement and Wonder in Missouri: A Report on the Progress of the Organ Restoration

Mike Quimby and Robert Wilkins

It was with some trepidation that I boarded the plane for Kansas City in mid-July en route to Warrensburg, Missouri, the home of the Quimby Pipe Organ Company. My purpose for this journey was to accomplish several tasks: 1) deliver the second payment to Mike Quimby for the work accomplished to date, 2) observe firsthand the Quimby shop, the employees, and the progress to date, and 3) satisfy my personal desire to see for myself this wonderful restoration work in process. My anxiety was the result of two things – 1) not wanting to embarrass myself, or SPC, for my lack of a full of understanding of all aspects of the organ building process, and 2) the fact that it was 101 degrees in the Kansas City area.

Mike Quimby’s business representative drove me the 65 miles from Kansas City to Warrensburg in the blistering heat. We had a delightful conversation about the current state of the organ building business in the US and the music business in general which helped ease my anxieties. Once we arrived, I met Mike Quimby and his staff, and completed the formal process of delivering the check.

Now it was time to explore.

The Quimby shop has four buildings located throughout the Warrensburg area. The buildings include the pipe shop, the wood working plant, the assembly building, and the warehouse for vintage pipework.

While I knew intellectually that pipe organs are 100% hand-built, it was thrilling to watch members of the Quimby team assembling each piece of the instrument by hand. Whether it was voicing every single pipe in the organ (some 5,000 for the SPC organ) or making the pneumatics that open the valves under each pipe (an older gentleman with a pot of hot glue and a tiny paint brush attaching leather to small pieces of wood to make each pneumatic….of which there are thousands in the organ) - or watching the assembly of the top boards for the wind chests (a group of the Quimby staff members gluing perfectly-sized boards together that must cure for six months before further work can be performed on them) – or even visiting the pipe warehouse where thousands of pipes of quality from distinguished older organs are stored to be reused in new instruments (the SPC instrument will have some pipework from the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in NYC) – everything was a source of amazement and wonder.

Watching and visiting with these craftsmen who took enormous pride in their highly specialized work was truly uplifting. We live at a time when so much of what we deal with each day is cranked out mindlessly, so watching them pursue their labor of love gave me tremendous pleasure. I can assure you that this experience will color my perception of the glorious instrument that will speak in SPC anew for Advent 2012.

By Robert Wilkins