Continuo

by Steve Panizza

The description of a new course at the University of Minnesota titled "Design for a Disrupted World" motivated me to develop the idea of a 43-note Gorham Street continuo organ last summer. A colleague queried a group of friends who were church musicians and came to a comparable conclusion. Think of the pipe organ in terms of tradition. Tradition, though, must evolve to remain relevant. Please think of this 43-note work-tool in terms of what it can do, not what it cannot do.

With a continuo design architecture that recycles old organ pipes with new, I evolved tradition to produce an instrument with a sustainable cost of ownership and the innate ability to invite a diverse set of musicians to participate in its use. In designing to employ Victorian pipe scales of wider width, I can offer timbres through the blended use of recycled pipework from eras past.

Find here 43-note continuo offerings that define the Gorham Street Pipe Organ Company. With blended tonal designs anchored on the idea of having a resplendent plenum, the simplicity of mechanical key and stop action, where Tannenberg meets Duqrocet meets Northrop. The influence of my agrarian Italian-Alpine ancestry on the practicality of a cabinet instrument with forty-three notes and the primitive beauty of milk-painted wood pipes in the front.

I welcome inquiries.

The keyboard stands at piano height. Everything inside is comfortably accessible and maintainable. The thought of a collaborative and cost-sustainable instrument that can honestly and fundamentally earn its keep on day one excites me.

Let us build one together.

As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is said to have said, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."