Raiders of the lost organ
David Kean's epic quest to track down the Novachord pays off
The Novachord is a rare, strange and wonderful instrument.
The making of a unique concert featuring four of these behemoths could sell as a blockbuster Hollywood thriller: A driven, compassionate music lover sets out to find four rare instruments. His Odyssean quest takes years. Finally, he finds his rare beauties only to see that time and sorrow have left them beaten. He seeks the best and wisest expert to repair them, dragging him away from the clutches of the evil rock and roll empire. He searches for original scores, traveling from the dusty back stacks of the Smithsonian Museum to South American capitals. His dream is to share his magnificent finds with humanity and end the obscurity of the poor Novachord.
Our hero is David Kean, curator for Calgary's Cantos Music Museum, and his epic quest to track down the legendary Novachord will culminate in a reproduction of the legendary concert that introduced the instrument to the world.
"This is a unique opportunity, a historic recreation of an important musical event, the first concert with an ensemble of electronic synthesizers," Kean says. "The concert was not recorded in 1939, recording technology was primitive then, so this music has only been heard once before. Here is a chance to listen to something you have never heard before, and likely will never hear again."
Kean's quest began when he worked as a musician, and had many requests for classic rock tunes that used synthesizers and electronic instruments. He sought the unique sounds of these early instruments, and got so swept away he amassed a huge collection and eventually even bought Mellotron – the company that makes the famous instrument used, most famously, in the opening to"Strawberry Fields Forever" by the Beatles. Cantos lured him away from the California sun with a dream job – curating one of the largest collections of antique and modern keyboards in the world, right here in Calgary.
Kean is poetic and reverent when discussing the Novachord, which was developed by the Hammond Organ company. Laurence Hammond originally owned a clock company but developed a more affordable and mass-produced portable organ to sound like a pipe organ. John Hanert, an inventor at Hammond, came up with the Novachord, the first instrument to use electronics instead of mechanical parts.
"The Novachord was the leading edge of technology in 1937," Kean says. "At that time it cost as much as a house, and was built like a tank. It weighs 450 pounds, and is too big to get through doors, so people took them apart. That took two hours, then even more time to put it back together again."
David was able to hire the illustrious John Limeseider to repair the instruments, a whiz who had worked on electronic instruments for everyone from Tom Petty to Nine Inch Nails.
Kean says the Novachord was the first instrument capable of electronically reproducing the sounds of an orchestra – an idea so advanced, it never really caught on again until the Poly Moog synthesizer was released in 1975 – but the Novachord was notorious for malfunctioning and it's difficult to repair. Of the 1,000 that were originally built, only about 200 exist today.
Then the idea of reproducing the first concert that introduced the Novachord to the world came to Kean. That event took place at the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing, New York. American composer Ferde Grofe arranged music by Debussy, among others, and wrote compositions for the electronic keyboard ensemble.
Kean tracked down these scores, eventually linking up with Grofe’s son in Bogota, Columbia, who allowed access to the music now held in the Library of Congress.
It's been a long journey, but Kean says the Novachord New World Ensemble at Cantos Music Museum on August 7 at 8 p.m. as part of the Calgary International Organ Festival will be a unique experience.
"These instruments are so rare, it is difficult to get them working," Kean says. "Right now (in the hands of local, talented keyboardists and organists) they are sounding beautiful."
David Kean will speak more about the history of the Novochord and electronic instruments on Noise, on August 1 at 9 p.m. on CJSW Radio 90.9 FM. |
