Music Plays On

By John Bojarski Eagle Staff Writer

February 01, 2014 Last Updated: February 01, 2014 11:17 AM Community

Ben Robertson plays the theater pipe organ in Harrisville. The instrument has more than 1,200 pipes, from 1 to 16 feet tall, divided into two rooms.

Estate maintains rare instrument

MARION TWP — Deep in the woods near Harrisville and Boyers is an estate with a long history of theater organ music.

Partners Ben Robertson and Don Fink have owned the 35-acre Blackwood Estate since the late 1960s and have staged organ concerts there since the early 1980s.

Robertson is the president of the Blackwood Theater Organ Society. In the music room of the house is a rare Wurlitzer theater pipe organ, which he and Fink discovered and bought in 1981.

“There are not too many of them,” Robertson said, noting there are less than 10 in Pennsylvania.

The organ has more than 1,200 pipes, divided into two rooms. Some of the pipes are made of wood, others of metal. The shortest pipes are about one foot tall, and the tallest are 16 feet. Many of the pipes produce the traditional organ sound, but others are designed to make sounds similar to tubas, trumpets and other instruments.

The rooms also include percussion elements that can be controlled by the organist.

The volume of the music is controlled by wooden shutters located on cutouts in the walls of the music room. Without the shutters, Robertson said the music would be excessively loud.Any concert that is played at the house can be recorded using MIDI computer technology, and played back later. However, rather than playing back a recording, the MIDI file actually causes the organ to play in the exact same way that it was originally played.The two men started to build the house's music room in 1986, and it was finished in 1991. Before that, they held occasional concerts outdoors.In 1989, they installed a platform and mechanism that allows the organ to rise to the music room from a chamber beneath it.Robertson said that listening to a theater organ concert is more exciting than listening to a classical organ concert.“There's subtle changes that (the performer) makes,” Robertson said. “It's not an organ recital.”He said a great performer can get an audience emotionally involved. He said he has seen patrons get teary-eyed during performances.“It's really an emotional experience,” Robertson said.Jason Wyles, vice president of the society, agreed.“It's amazing how you can get swept up in the sound of the organ,” Wyles said.

Susan Kemenyffy of Erie County, who is friends with Robertson and Fink, said that attending a concert at the estate is an “experience,” where attendees walk around the property and take in everything before the music starts.“It's a visual experience. It's an audio experience. It's a human experience,” Kemenyffy said.The society stages about four concerts per year at the house, getting about 100 people per show, and the concerts are not held just for the sake of holding a concert. The society became a 501c3 charitable organization in 2000. Proceeds from the concert go to charitable causes.“We're not going to do these for self indulgence,” Robertson said.

Since 1991, concerts have raised $322,000 for Make-A-Wish and have helped fulfill 83 wishes in Butler County.The 11-year-old daughter of a customer at Robertson and Fink's art gallery in Pittsburgh was diagnosed with lymphoma, and she was granted a wish from the foundation. Robertson and Fink felt that this would be a good charity to support.Concerts also benefit scholarships for students who want to pursue music education.Both Robertson and Fink came from poor families, and said they know how difficult it can be to get an education. Robertson said that annual tuition at a good music school can be about $40,000. “How many students can afford that?” Robertson said.Since 2000, the society has handed out more than $200,000 in scholarships to nearly 60 students, mostly from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and West Virginia.Organ concerts are not the only thing interesting about the estate.

Both Robertson and Fink had lived in Pittsburgh for a long time, and they wanted to go somewhere they had some space.“A place to get away,” Robertson said.They started with a small 12-foot-by-16-foot house on the property, where they lived while building their current home.The main house, which is 4,500 square feet, was built in 1976.“We built it by hand,” Robertson said.Just about all of the buildings on the property were built by hand, with Robertson and Fink getting help from friends and relatives. These include a 68-foot tall clock tower, installed in 2006. The five-story tower serves as a guest house, with one room on each floor, and features a 1907 Seth Thomas clock with a 6-foot face.

Kemenyffy provided artwork for the main house and music room. She also documented the grounds and gardens for the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Gardens, which is a collection of photographs and records of historic and modern gardens in the U.S.If someone 100 years from now were to wonder what gardens in Western Pennsylvania looked like in the early 2000s, Kemenyffy said they could visit the archives and look up gardens like Robertson's and Fink's.“It's for history,” Kemenyffy said.She spent about a year documenting the property and taking photographs. The property has dozens of varieties of trees, shrubs and flowers. The garden was accepted into the Smithsonian program in 2013. “Ben and Don have a wonderful garden,” Kemenyffy said.For information visitwww.blackwoodmusic.org. To contact the theater organ society, e-mail ben@blackwoodmusic.org or call 724-735-2813.

A hydraulic elevator, right, lifts the Wurlitzer theater pipe organ into the music room at the Blackwood estate in Harrisville.

The Wurlitzer theater pipe organ is featured in the music room at the Blackwood estate in Harrisville. Proceeds from concerts played on the instrument go to charitable causes, such as Make-A-Wish.

With the pipes located in two other rooms, the intensity of the theater organ's sound is controlled by wooden shutters that fill cutouts in the walls into the music room. Without the shutters, Robertson said the music would be excessively loud.