Wonderful to see the return of Mighty Wurlitzers

Music is always with us, yet we celebrate it with recognition awards to artists, in galas and in concerts. The Tabernacle Choir's 75-year anniversary concert in the Conference Center comes three days following Ogden's Peery's Egyptian Theater's grand 80th birthday gala and organ concert featuring two world-famous artists inaugurating the newly installed theater pipe organ.

Seventy-five to 80 years ago, the world welcomed theater organs that do all that an orchestra can do, to the delight of audiences in search of music in all its variety. Today, the "Return of a Mighty Wurlitzer" in this beautifully restored Ogden theater again brings us music in all its variety. As though a new discovery has been made, Utah's arts-loving, music-loving public is refreshed and openly excited.

Adding to the excitement, Salt Lake County and city planners have courted the Main Street Arts and Culture Center concept centered around restoring the Utah Pantages Theater to its former glory. Will the plans include the voice of the theater? Up north in Logan, the beautiful, newly restored Ellen Eccles Theater is without a voice, while another Mighty Wurlitzer has arrived there to await its entry into the arts. Yes, it takes money to make it happen, and philanthropists and musical arts lovers are investing in their communities' futures.

Bringing these organs back to life here in Utah, in the midst of national recognition of the Tabernacle Choir's 75-year, live radio broadcast achievement, presents a setting that has emphasized the value of music, performed live, before an appreciative audience. Theaters are built and populated to present the arts in all their variety, and it follows, as the night follows the day, that a theater without an orchestra's or a theater organ's voice is missing its heart and soul. Listening to Pavarotti sing in a live performance in front of you, seated comfortably in company with a large audience, is an experience that is light-years distant from the very same sound coming from your living room or car stereo.

On July 11, Salt Lake County's Capitol Theater bid a fond adieu to Andrew Lloyd Webber's very popular "Phantom of the Opera." This show played for weeks — as before — with a pit orchestra, augmented by a digital keyboard providing the sound of the huge organ that opens the show. Yet, the Capitol's Wurlitzer theater organ remained silent. Somehow, its voice wasn't considered, yet to use it would have opened the show with live pipe organ thunder for as great a theatrical effect as the flying chandelier.