FORT COLLINS, Colo.—Workers have completed an exhaustive restoration and move of a massive pipe organ from Colorado State University’s music building to its Center for the Arts.
The Casavant organ has 2,096 pipes—the tallest are 19 feet high—and occupies an entire wall of a center recital hall. CSU will celebrate its restoration with a Casavant Organ Debut Festival starting Friday.
Workers spent 3,000 hours disassembling, restoring and moving the organ, said CSU spokeswoman Kimberly Sorensen. The organ has a 56-note keyboard, a 32-note pedal board and 34 stops.
Robert Cavarra, a former CSU professor emeritus of music, assisted in the organ’s design and brought it to CSU in 1968. Cavarra died in February 2008.
The Casavant Organ was built in the style of Northern German organs of the 17th and 18th centuries.
“People really love this organ,” said Joel Bacon, an endowed chair of organ and liturgical studies who will perform. “In other parts of the country, places like New York City, you’re lucky to get 30 or 40 people to come to organ recitals and here in Fort Collins we fill concert halls with these organ recitals.”
