Larry McGuire, East Kilbride 2/10 Wurlitzer (ex New Victoria/Odeon, Edinburgh, August 1983 скачать в хорошем качестве

Larry McGuire, East Kilbride 2/10 Wurlitzer (ex New Victoria/Odeon, Edinburgh, August 1983

Larry McGuire, then the resident organist in the UK’s largest working theatre, the Edinburgh Playhouse, where he played the 3 manual 43 rank (enlarged) Hilsdon organ, was invited to perform a concert on the 2/10 Wurlitzer in the Ballerup Hall, East Kilbride. This Wurlitzer was originally installed in the Embassy Theatre, Baltimore, USA, as a standard 2/8 Model ‘F’ with the theatre owners paying for it on ‘hire purchase’. However they defaulted on payments and Wurlitzer repossessed the organ. The original configuration was Tibia, Tuba, and Vox Humana in the Solo Chamber, with Open Diapason, Concert Flute, Viol, Viol Celeste, and Clarinet in the Main Chamber. When the order was received from the Edinburgh cinema, a 2 rank chest with English Horn and Kinura was added to the Solo Chamber, and it was shipped to the UK as a 2/10, with some oddities in the stop list in order to accommodate the tabs for the extra ranks without increasing the bolster size. It was installed by Scovell & Co. Ltd, organbuilders of Edinburgh. The two chambers were stacked vertically on the right side of the auditorium, with the plain French polished console on a lift in the centre of the wide orchestra pit. It was removed in 1968 when the cinema installed a larger screen for 70mm projection and installed in the Kirkcaldy home of Tom Lockhart, who owned a large Linen Mill in that town. The chamber was the former sitting room and a modestly sized extension was built as the listening area. He could seat about 40 for a concert there. When he retired he eventually sold the organ for £1 to the East Kilbride Cinema Organ Society and they replaced the small Compton organ in the Ballerup Hall of East Kilbride Civic Centre with the Wurlitzer, which was installed in 2 chambers at the back of the shallow stage, with extremely efficient swell shutters. Even when it was full, this hall had good reverberation, although the acoustic was a bit ‘bassy’. When the Society vacated the hall, the organ was broken up for spares and although they had bought 2 other Wurlitzers in the meanwhile, it is now scattered around the UK, Larry performed many times for the East Kilbride Cinema Organ Society, and their successors, the Scottish Cinema Organ Trust, on their second Wurlitzer, which was installed in Clydebank Town Hall, then subsequently in Pollockshaws Burgh Hall, and on the Compton organ of the Summerlee Museum, Coatbridge. He always pulled in large audiences for them, including their largest to date, when he accompanied ‘The General’ in Pollockshaws Burgh Hall during the Southside Festival. STOPS – the Scottish Theatre Organ Preservation Society, founded on 29th October 1972, is Scotland’s oldest cinema/theatre organ society, and is a registered Scottish charity (SC 018217). We own and operate the New Palace Theatre Organ Heritage Centre in Greenlaw, Scotland and present an annual season of silent films with live accompaniment as well as other events. Our website is www.stops.org for the Society and www.nptohc.co.uk for the New Palace Theatre Organ Heritage Centre and we are on Facebook as ‘stops.org’ and ‘nptohc’. We welcome donations of all amounts, which can be made to www.paypal.me/stops