Music by the Ton

After a continental crossing in two trailer trucks, nearly 20 tons of equipment and machinery comprising the new organ for Bridges Hall of Music arrived on campus for unloading May 21. More than 30 volunteers--faculty, staff, students, and community members--helped to carry in loads for its installation in the newly remodeled Little Bridges.

The organ--designed and built specially for Little Bridges as Opus 117 of the C.B. Fisk Company of Gloucester, Massachusetts, the worldÕs leading builder of organs--was assembled by a crew of six workers during three weeks in June. Once assembly of the instumentÕs 5,000 pieces was complete, a two-member crew spent a week tuning the organ in preparation for its voicing--a process that will require another eight months of work.

The new organ's 3,519 pipes--some made of wood and others of metal, the largest 32 feet long and the smallest less than a half inch in length--will encompass the full pitch range of human hearing.

A series of inaugural concerts for the new Fisk organ will take place in 2002-03.

Related Links

Photos of the new organ and the renovation of Little Bridges
http://www.music.pomona.edu/