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Touring the vanishing instruments of Beacon 

Some people take their hats off before entering a house of worship. Joseph Bertolozzi puts on his shoes.

“They’re like dance shoes,” he said while standing outside St. Lawrence Friary in Beacon on a recent afternoon, holding up a pair of shiny black leather shoes with chunky heels but no welt, the skinny strip of leather that attaches the upper part of the shoe to the sole. This makes it easier to play two notes with one foot while working the pedal board beneath a pipe organ. 

“Some people play in their bare feet or socks,” he said. “I use organ shoes.”

Most people know Bertolozzi as a composer. In 2004 he turned the Mid-Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie into the world’s largest percussion instrument for Bridge Music, a piece he composed by recording himself “playing” parts of the structure. The success of Bridge Music helped him convince the mayor of Paris to allow him to record himself whacking on the Eiffel Tower with mallets, which became Tower Music. 

Given his experience with making music emerge from large, ungainly structures, it’s unsurprising that his expertise extends to pipe organs, which he has composed for and played worldwide, including at the Vatican. In 2013, to celebrate Beacon’s centennial, he compiled a guide to the city’s 11 pipe organs and led tours in which he would play some of them. 

Bertolozzi once arranged a meeting at Max’s on Main to organize a larger Hudson Valley Pipe Organ Trail that he envisioned starting at the West Point Cadet Chapel, which has the largest church organ in the world, with 23,500 pipes. In Europe, he knew, organists led tourists around town as they played the same pieces at various churches.

But the number of potential stops in the Highlands is plummeting. The instrument at St. Lawrence is scheduled to be removed next month. Development at Craig House, the potential sale of St. Andrew Episcopal Church and relocations at the Carmelite Monastery have put their organs in limbo. 

At the former Reformed Church, now a performance space known as Prophecy Hall, the owners are discarding its 1895 Geo. H. Ryder & Co. organ because it interferes with the accessibility of the restroom. The organ is free for the taking, although it will cost about $20,000 to move it, according to the Organ Clearing House in Newcastle, Maine. 

For Bertolozzi, Beacon’s vanishing pipe organs represent receding history. “It’s an audible link” to the past, he said. “Music is so ephemeral. You play it, it’s gone and it’s never there again. But if you could bring those people back and play the organ for them, it would be the same sound that they remember. This is the history of Beacon. And it’s being ransacked.”

In the days before radio, many homes had a music room with a piano and other instruments. You flaunted your wealth with a pipe organ and perhaps a dedicated organist. The wealthiest of the wealthy had organs built for their yachts with metals that didn’t oxidize in the salt air.

Ostentatious wealth was how the 58-pipe organ built by Johnson & Company in 1873 came to be installed in Tioronda, the sprawling mansion owned by the Civil War general Joseph Howland on the outskirts of what was then called Fishkill Landing. In 1915, Tioronda was purchased by two doctors and became the psychiatric hospital known as Craig House. On the hospital’s last day in 1999, Bertolozzi played a farewell concert for its employees. 

The former Craig House is being converted into Mirbeau Inn & Spa, a luxury resort. Bertolozzi said the owners plan to restore the facade but not the organ itself, which he guesses would cost $500,000.

The oldest organ in the city is at St. Andrew. It was built by George Jardine & Son and predates the Civil War and the building. Bertolozzi believes it was relocated around the turn of the 20th century from a chapel on DeWindt Street or a carriage house chapel on South Avenue, both of which are gone. The church has put the building on the market and, separately, would like to sell its Tiffany windows. “What will they do with the organ if they’re selling the windows?” said Bertolozzi.

At the same time, Bertolozzi is practical. Even if these historic organs were restored, who would play them? And who would listen? For years, he’s been the only person to play the instrument at St. Lawrence. Even a skilled piano player will not be familiar with the keyboards, foot pedals and racks of buttons and knobs. 

“There’s no such thing as a bad pipe organ, only bad organists,” said John VanDerlee, dean of the Central Hudson Valley chapter of the American Guild of Organists. “A good organist knows how to make even a bad organ sound good. But the problem is that there’s not many pathways to become a good organist.”

Bertolozzi used to give lessons to the nuns at the Carmelite Monastery at Hiddenbrooke, but the remaining sisters were moved this month. The Archdiocese of New York has not announced plans for the building. 

VanDerlee and Bertolozzi met in the 1990s when the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie found a pipe organ in storage. Bertolozzi led a campaign to have it restored and reinstalled. The men work to find homes for wayward organs or save their parts for scrap. VanDerlee doesn’t play but appreciates the instruments’ complex mechanics, comparing his interest to people who love classic cars.

Electronic pipe organs take up far less space but are soulless in their perfection, VanDerlee said — although he noted they can be programmed to simulate the random quirks of traditional pipe organs.

“This one has trumpets,” said Bertolozzi at St. John the Evangelist before he played a piece he composed for a friend’s wedding. Earlier in the day, he had played the piece on the smaller organ at St. Lawrence, but it sounded more triumphant in the cavernous interior of St. John.

The organ is fairly new, from 1989. The church has kept it and the organ at its sister parish, St. Joachim, in working order. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard they were restoring their organs,” Bertolozzi said.

Videos by Brian PJ Cronin