SAN ANTONIO - Organ builder Curtis Bobsin is a busy fellow this time of year, with many San Antonio churches relying on him to assure their beloved pipe organs sound majestic at Christmas services.
Each December, Bobsin visits several congregations per day, performing routine maintenance or urgent repairs. The same hectic pace precedes Easter, and whenever the weather changes enough to alter the sounds made by air being forced through organ pipes.
Bobsin's sharp ear for tuning and his mechanical skills with pipe organs are in high demand in San Antonio, around Texas and in several other states. He practices the unusual craft of organ building in an East Side workshop, where he and eight employees make entire pipe organs as well as components for existing installations.
It's a thriving yet unlikely career for the Kentucky transplant. He got in the trade in Louisville before relocating about eight years ago to San Antonio, when he took over a renowned local workshop and its clientele throughout South Texas.
In recent years, he's worked on organs at Our Lady of Grace and Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, and Highland Park Baptist in Austin. He recently completed a major renovation of the instrument at Our Lady of the Lake Sacred Heart Chapel, whose more than 1,300 pipes had been silent about 15 years.
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Last Wednesday, Bobsin had a look at the organ at Laurel Heights United Methodist Church, which has more than 3,000 pipes. Equipped with a roll of hand tools and a phone app for tuning, he moved through a checklist to make sure the instrument would be ready for upcoming services.
When his wife, Tory, pushed a key and the note didn't sound right, Bobsin would locate the corresponding pipe or reed and adjust it - a tedious process that can take several hours.
"Complicated machines often need a lot of ongoing maintenance and TLC to keep them working," said Geoffrey Waite, organist and music director at Laurel Heights Methodist.
"Pipe organs by their nature go out of tune - they change with the humidity and the temperature," he added.
Piano student first
Bobsin's pre-holiday visit was scheduled well in advance, but that's not always the case.
"It's really valuable to have someone like Curtis when it's a Saturday night and something happens to the organ and you need it on Sunday morning. There's somebody in town you can call to come over and fix it," Waite said.For Bobsin, the route to becoming a master of his trade started as a young piano student in Kentucky."I didn't take to lessons well, so I learned by ear," he said, developing a trait that would serve him well years later.At age 16 and for the next five years, Bobsin was a tow truck driver, co-owning three trucks until the business went under.
"I needed a job, and we had a family friend who worked at Miller Pipe Organ in Louisville. I hired on as a gofer - the bottom of the ladder - and kind of took to it," Bobsin said. He rose to general manager and took control of the organ service company with clients in 10 states.
"We serviced 300 different organs, so I was exposed to every type of organ out there, and having to repair them and work on them in the field," he said."That informs my design work now - everything I build is with the mindset of having to maintain it for 50 years," Bobsin said.
Took over the business
Bobsin was drawn to San Antonio in 2007 to work with a regionally-prominent organ builder, the late John Ballard, who had no understudies when he passed away in 2010. As contract employees, Bobsin and his wife gradually began serving all of Ballard's clients, and eventually took over the business.
Several years later, the enterprise is thriving, with plenty of work to go around in the small world of organ building. In the nation's midsection, "there's at least one guy like me in each major city," Bobsin said. They're more common closer to the East Coast and less common to the West, he said.
In San Antonio, "there's only one other person left, an older gentleman who works out of his home and still maintains a few instruments here, but there are no other businesses as such," Bobsin said.
Bobsin's company, C. Bobsin Organs, based in an unmarked workshop, combines several disciplines including cabinetry, metalwork and electronics.
"Everything here we build from scratch," he said.Some finished components come from suppliers, but wood that will become an organ cabinet arrives rough-cut, and pipes are fabricated on-site from sheets of poured metal, he said."There's no models. Every organ is custom-built for where it goes," Bobsin said.That makes precise measurements, including sanctuary temperature readings, a key element of the practice.
A big part of the enterprise is revitalizing older organs, like the project at Our Lady of the Lake. Bobsin said he's fostered a reputation for "the willingness to reuse existing organs and existing pipes and build on what a church has already invested in. A lot of times an organ company wants to come in and literally throw everything out and put in their own brand-new organ," he said.
'Plenty of work'
Some organs require more attention than others, Bobsin said. The instrument at Trinity University's Parker Chapel is serviced about once a month during the school year because of frequent use, he said.
With potential jobs in several states, "we have to schedule our work strategically. We have plenty of work. The challenge is, what happens when a church in Victoria or Corpus Christi has an emergency and needs two weeks worth of work?"Pipe organs can be expensive to maintain for churches with meager resources, but they're a valued part of a congregation's spiritual environment, much like stained-glass windows, Bobsin contends.
"You might spend $25,000 to $75,000 on an electronic organ that has a 20-year life span. You might spend five or 10 times that much on a pipe organ, but it has an indefinite life span," he said. "As long as there's someone like me, you can actually refurbish the wood and leather to keep an organ going. It's a generational investment instead of a 20-year investment."
Resource: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Organ-builder-makes-Christmas-music-pitch-perfect-6713748.php
