Dustin Tatro | |
---|---|
Occupation | Organist • Radio Personality • Church Musician |
Organization(s) | Texas Rangers, MLB |
Title | Official Organist, Texas Rangers & Globe Life Field Organist/Choirmaster, St. Andrew's Anglican Church, Breckenridge, Texas OM/PD/On-Air Host, WesTex Communications RadioContents |
Website | TEXOrganGuy.com theRockDownShow.com |
Dustin Tatro is an American musician who was the stadium organist for Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers. He was ousted in 2024. [1]
Tatro serves as organist and choirmaster at St. Andrew's Anglican Church in Breckenridge, Texas, and is also a 20-year radio personality currently serving as OM/PD and chief engineer for WesTex Communications in Abilene, hosting middays on 106.3 The Raider. Formerly, Tatro hosted middays for Q Country 96.1 (KORQ) and a late-night rock program on KGNZ. He was also the creator and host of a globally-syndicated weekly radio show called The RockDown Show with Dustin Tatro, which features artist interviews and counts down the top ten songs in Christian Rock. [2] He also holds certification as a Texas EMT. [3]
Tatro worked for the Texas Rangers from 2020 to 2024. [4] He was the first official organist of the Rangers since Marcia Rogers left in 2001 after playing since the opening of Globe Life Park in Arlington in 1994. [3] He got the job when Chuck Morgan, Executive Vice President for Ballpark Entertainment, saw videos Tatro had posted on social media while rehearsing for a major pipe organ recital and reached out to invite him to become organist for the Rangers. [3]
Beginning with the 2020 Major League Baseball season, the Texas Rangers began playing at Globe Life Field, which, as of September 2021, does not have an organ installed. [5] For the 2020 season, Tatro recorded approximately 750 pieces of organ music on a refurbished 1951 Hammond C2 organ that he acquired from the storage of a local Baptist church. [3] He also recorded some songs on the 2,800-pipe Garland organ at St. Paul UMC Abilene, where he was the organist from 2014-2022. [3] [6] Like many other stadium organists, Tatro takes requests on social media. [7]
In March 2024 Tatro announced that he was no longer with The Texas Rangers stating he had been replaced by an electric guitar [8] . In May 2024 he hinted he would begin playing the organ for Abilene's newly founded Mid American League Team, The Flying Bison. [9]
Tatro is from Andrews, Texas, and has lived in Abilene since 2009. [3] He holds undergraduate and masters degrees in church music, with organ and choral conducting emphases, from Hardin-Simmons University. [5] He is an Episcopalian and a member of the Association of Anglican Musicians. He is married to Staci Armstrong. [5]
In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions or other means for producing tones. The organs have usually two or three, up to five, manuals for playing with the hands and a pedalboard for playing with the feet. With the use of registers, several groups of pipes can be connected to one manual.
Virgil Keel Fox was an American organist, known especially for his years as organist at Riverside Church in New York City, from 1946 to 1965, and his flamboyant "Heavy Organ" concerts of the music of Bach in the 1970s, staged complete with light shows. His many recordings made on the RCA Victor and Capitol labels, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, have been remastered and re-released on compact disc in recent years. They continue to be widely available in mainstream music stores.
Music & the Spoken Word is a religious radio and television series. Broadcast weekly from the Salt Lake Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah, the program primarily features performances of music by Tabernacle Choir (Choir)—often accompanied by the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ and the Orchestra at Temple Square. The program also includes spiritual messages and passages related to a specific episode's theme, presented by Lloyd D. Newell.
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Walt Strony is an American recording, consulting and performing organist and organ teacher, both on the theatre organ and traditional pipe organ, ranging from pizza parlors to churches and theatres to symphony orchestras.
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