Free concert features historic pipe organ

Houston Community College is hosting a free concert featuring music from silent movies, the Jazz Age, vintage baseball games and Broadway show tunes at 1 p.m. May 21 in the system’s central campus auditorium of the San Jacinto Memorial Building at 1300 Holman St. in Midtown.

Renowned organist and award-winning sports broadcaster Ken Double is the featured performer and will play a rare and newly restored 90-year-old theater pipe organ. Double also is president and chief executive officer of the American Theatre Organ Society.

“This organ is such a treasure for Houston,” said Jon Steen, president of the Houston Theater Organ Society.

“It is a musical marvel and a sight to behold. We invite Houston music fans to hear it for themselves.”

The 90-minute concert is sponsored by the Houston Theatre Organ Society and HCC. The performance will focus on big-band, Gershwin-style tunes and popular songs from classic American eras.

Seating for the free concert is on a firstcome, first-served basis. Parking is available at no charge on a space-available basis at HCC parking lots.

Concertgoers and those who requiring wheelchair assistance may be dropped off by car adjacent to the auditorium by entering Parking Lot 13 at the corner of Alabama and San Jacinto streets.

More than 1,100 individual pipes produce sound for the organ, which is created by sending wind through the pipes, or using pneumatically operated strikers on percussion instruments. Known as the “Mighty Wurlitzer Pipe Organ, Opus 1501,” the organ at HCC is the only operational theater pipe organ in Houston and one of only three in Texas.

According to the college system, the organ has a long history that brought it from New York to Houston.

The organ debuted on Christmas Day 1926 at the Metropolitan Theater in downtown Houston. It provided the musical score to hundreds of movies for nearly 15 years. In 1972, the organ was salvaged from a now-demolished theater, restored and installed in a Memorial-area residence.

In 1985, the organ was placed in storage in Rochester, New York, where it remained for 10 years. In the mid-1990s, it was put up for sale and purchased by the late Tim Hastings, a Houston dentist, who donated it to the Houston Theatre Organ Society.

With the help of organ society volunteers and members of the San Jacinto High School Alumni Association (who continue to meet at HCC Central Campus), the organ and its elaborate pipe system were relocated to the auditorium of the San Jacinto Memorial Building. In 1994, then-HCC Central President James P. Engle agreed to provide a free home for the organ, which was played sparingly for the next 15 years.

After the San Jacinto Memorial Building was renovated and reopened in 2013, volunteers restored and updated the organ’s control and piping systems.

The organ’s musical range was expanded to offer 17 instruments (flutes, reeds and strings), as well as numerous percussion instruments (xylophone, marimba, chimes, bells,

drums and cymbals), according to the college system.