The $1 million Sursa Hall concert organ will be unveiled in an inaugural concert Sunday, Oct. 22, at 4 p.m. after one year of construction and eight weeks of installation.
The concert will feature Ann Sursa Carney, daughter of the benefactors, David and Mary Jane Sursa and international concert organist James David Christie.
Kirby Koriath, professor of Music Performance and coordinator of graduate programs in music, said the Sursa family donated enough money to purchase the organ and maintain it for several years.
"This is the same Sursa family that the concert hall is named after," Koriath said. "So already this family has demonstrated great benevolence and love for Ball State over the years and this adds to that."
Goulding and Wood, Inc., of Indianapolis worked with Ball State University to create the type and quality of instrument the School of Music needed, Koriath said.
"Pipe organs today must be visually exciting as well as aurally beautiful," he said. "To have a beautiful-sounding instrument that would not fit in architecturally with a church, a building or an auditorium, would not be acceptable."
Jason Overall, president of Goulding and Wood, Inc., said that there is variance among the organs that they build, but Ball State's stands out.
"Every pipe organ is built uniquely," Overall said. "The musical design and the physical design with any are unique, no matter how big or small. Ball State's organ had an extra-special situation. The room [where the organ is located] is both acoustically designed as well as physically designed. It was interesting to work on."
How the organ will be used is also unique, and Koriath said people are happy with the results.
"When you see it in context, it is a performance or concert hall organ," Koriath said. "The idea of putting fine organs in fine performance spaces is an older idea. It is done for the reason that there is a lot of repertoire featuring large ensembles, so there will be bands, choirs and orchestras. Beyond the church setting there is a large body of literature for organ."
Ball State has wanted to bring an organ to campus for about 30 years, Koriath said. Other locations could have been Emens Auditorium or Pruis Hall, but it would have been impractical to put an organ in either.
"I think that every one of the architects, the facilities people at Ball State, the college leadership, the school and the donors are very happy with the result," he said. "Its a beautiful installation."
Ball State's organ has 3,344 pipes and weighs more than 34,000 pounds. It took a full year to build in Indianapolis and four additional weeks to install on campus. Of that year, eight months were devoted to making the instrument sound correctly, which is called voicing, Brandon Woods, vice president of Goulding and Wood, Inc., said.
"When I do the voicing of an organ, I do about 90 percent of it in the shop," he said. "What I first do is visit the space for the first time, I take a mental snapshot of the room's acoustics and from there I usually make educated guesses about how the pipes should be worked. Its all about the shaping of sound, adding the color to the organ."
Organ pipes are arranged into ranks based on the sounds they make. The Sursa Hall concert organ has 63 ranks of pipes. The pipes are classified as either flue or reed pipes. Flue pipes make up the foundation of sound for the pipe organ, while the reed pipes mimic other musical instruments.
The shop is a better environment than on location to voice an organ, Woods said. He has practiced the art of voicing for more than twenty years.
"I didn't take the organ that seriously when I first started out," he said. "And then when I was in my late 20s, I started to take it more seriously."
Koriath said Goulding and Wood, Inc., was a great company to work with for the Ball State organ project.
"In a process like this, on one hand you defer to the expertise master builder, the master artisans, while on the other, you are anxious to contribute as the recipient of the instrument," Koriath said. "They were an excellent company to work with. They were collaborative and wanted to know what kind of instrument we wanted, how will the organ be used. We are very happy with the result."
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