Rodgers Instruments Corporation is an American manufacturer of classical and church organs. Rodgers was incorporated May 1, 1958 in Beaverton, Oregon by founders, Rodgers W. Jenkins and Fred Tinker, employees of Tektronix, Inc., of Portland, Oregon, and members of a Tektronix team developing transistor-based oscillator circuits.[1] Rodgers was the second manufacturer of solid state oscillator-based organs, completing their first instrument in 1958 (the first was the Gulbransen "B" home organ, introduced in July 1957. Both the Rodgers and the Gulbransen had vacuum-tube amplifiers. In 1962, upon introducing solid-state amplifiers, Rodgers became the world's first all-transistor organ).[1] Other Rodgers innovations in the electronic organ industry include solid-state organ amplifiers (1962),[1] single-contact diode keying (1961),[2]reed switch pedal keying for pedalboards (1961),[2] programmable computer memory pistons (1966),[1] and the first MIDI-supported church organs (1986).[1]
Rodgers' manufacturing facility and world headquarters is located in Hillsboro, Oregon. All Rodgers organs are built in the Oregon factory.[1]
On January 4, 2016, Roland Corporation agreed to the Dutch Vandeweerd family’s acquisition of the American company Rodgers Instruments, effective January 15, 2016.[3][4] The Vandeweerd family (Global Organ Group) already owned three other organ brands: Johannus, Makin and Copeman Hart.[5]
Technology
Rodgers' success was largely due to their early innovations with solid state analog tone generation technology. Despite the fact that competitors such as Allen switched to digitally synthesized tone generation as early as 1971, Rodgers sold exclusively analog tone generation instruments until 1990.
Rodgers introduced its first digital organ on November 20, 1990,[6] using a tone generation system Rodgers has dubbed Parallel Digital Imaging (PDI). Rodgers PDI organs use Roland DSPs and digitally sampled organ pipes for tone generation.
A feature introduced in 1993, which Rodgers has termed "Digital Domain Expression," offers swell box effects such as expression delays, high frequency damping and phase shifts of sound across a stereo field as expression shoes are opened or closed, similar to the effects produced by the swell shades on a pipe organ's swell box.
In 2014, Rodgers new Infinity II models introduced Bluetooth wireless controls, including support for reading music from an iPad.
Although known primarily for its electronic organs, Rodgers has built many pipe organs and pipe/electronic combination organs.
Many Rodgers organs support the playing of actual pipe ranks in addition to their normal, electronic ranks. The first electronic organ to successfully integrate pipes and electronic tone generation was a Rodgers Gemini with Fratelli Ruffatti organ pipes installed in the Atlanta area home of Dr. Walter and Emily Spivey.[1] It included a tuning control so the pipes and electronics could stay in tune with each other.
The largest full pipe organ produced by the company was the Second Baptist Church Houston, Texas organ with five manuals and 187 pipe ranks.[7] It was dedicated on August 23, 1987 and featured concerts on August 23 and 24th by organist Frederick Swann. In addition, it was the featured organ of the 1988 Houston National Convention of the American Guild of Organists where it was played by organist Diane Bish. However, the organ’s console was offered for sale on eBay in 2015 and the instrument is no longer used.
In August 1991, another large all-pipe Rodgers organ installed at Glenkirk Presbyterian Church, Glendora, California was the cover feature of The American Organist, official journal of the American Guild of Organists.
Corporate affiliations
Four manual Rodgers organ installed in a church
Originally controlled by officers of Tektronix and the founding engineers, in September 1977, Rodgers became part of CBS Musical Instruments along with Steinway & Sons pianos, Fender guitars, Rhodes electric pianos, Gemeinhardt flutes, and a number of other instrument brand names. In 1985 CBS, divested itself of Rodgers, along with Steinway and Gemeinhardt, all of which were purchased by Steinway Musical Properties. Beginning May 1, 1988, Roland Corporation became the parent company of Rodgers, and Rodgers its subsidiary. This lasted until 2015. In addition to its own Rodgers organs, Rodgers produced Atelier home organs and Roland Classic C-330 and C-380 organs designed for home studios. As of January 4, 2016, Vandeweerd (Owner of Johannus) has been the parent company of Rodgers.
Touring organs
Organist Virgil Fox helped bring Rodgers organs into the limelight in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he used a Rodgers Touring Organ, built in 1966 and known as "Black Beauty," for his "Heavy Organ" concerts, including a 1970 all Bach performance that included a light show at the Fillmore East Auditorium in New York City.
A sister five manual instrument to the Carnegie Hall Organ, named by Fox the "Royal V", served as Fox's touring organ for the 1975-76 concert season, but proved unwieldy to tour with. The Royal V was used at Fox's funeral in the Crystal Cathedral after he died on October 25, 1980.
A second black Rodgers touring organ was active in the 1970s. The "American Beauty" was based on Rodgers's then premium three manual model, the "American Classic". Concert organists who played on this instrument or "Black Beauty" (which continued touring under Roberta Bailey Artists International well into the 80s) included Ted Alan Worth, Joyce Jones, Pierre Cochereau, Herman Berlinski, Richard Morris, Keith Chapman, Douglas Marshall, John Grady, Frederick Geoghan, William S. Wrenn, Jr., and Diane Bish.
The Royal V was, in 1983, refinished from black to white and permanently installed in the Meishusama Hall of the Shinji Shumeikai in Minsono, Japan. In mid-2004, this same organ was updated to newer Rodgers technology. Dan Miller and McNeill Robinson, consultants on the project, revised and updated the organ's tonal specification during the update to Trillium level Parallel Digital Imaging technology.
The current Rodgers touring organ is Hector Olivera's "The King", a black four manual organ featuring a custom French specification that Olivera plays in various concert venues nationally.
Previously, John Ratzenberger's Made in AmericaTravel Channel show featured at segment on Rodgers filmed at Rodgers’ Hillsboro, Oregon plant. That episode still appears from time to time on the Travel Channel.
Rodgers factory is also featured in Karen Axelrod and Bruce Brumberg’s popular “Watch it Made in the U.S.A.” books profiling interesting factory tours of American manufacturing facilities.
A four-manual Rodgers organ, formerly the residence organ of Dr. Frederick Swann, is heard and seen weekly on the Hour of Power broadcast.
Availability
The availability of Rodgers Instruments is ensured by the distribution and the sales of an international dealer network. The factory to produce these organs in the United States was sold by previous owners of Rodgers ie Roland . Currently consoles are constructed in Holland and organs are assembled in the United States to avoid excessive duties and tariffs. These include Rodgers Organs in Canada,[8] ChurchOrganWorld in the UK[9] and Rodgers Organs in Germany.[10]
Johannus (Vandeweerd company's Organ brand. Vandeweerd is New owner of Rodgers)
Roland Corporation (Rodgers builds Roland Atelier organs and digital pianos)
Virgil Fox played Rodgers' "Black Beauty" and "Royal V" organs in his "Heavy Organ" tours.
Related Research Articles
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre, volume, and construction throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have many ranks of pipes of differing pitch, timbre, and volume that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops.
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.
An organ stop is a component of a pipe organ that admits pressurized air to a set of organ pipes. Its name comes from the fact that stops can be used selectively by the organist; each can be "on", or "off".
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.
An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since developed into several types of instruments:
A pedalboard is a keyboard played with the feet that is usually used to produce the low-pitched bass line of a piece of music. A pedalboard has long, narrow lever-style keys laid out in the same semitone scalar pattern as a manual keyboard, with longer keys for C, D, E, F, G, A, and B, and shorter, raised keys for C♯, D♯, F♯, G♯ and A♯. Training in pedal technique is part of standard organ pedagogy in church music and art music.
Casavant Frères is a Canadian organ building company in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, which has been building pipe organs since 1879. As of 2014, the company has produced more than 3,900 organs.
The word "manual" is used instead of the word "keyboard" when referring to any hand-operated keyboard on a keyboard instrument that has a pedalboard, such as an organ; or when referring to one of the keyboards on an instrument that has more than one hand-operated keyboard, such as a two- or three-manual harpsichord.
Bass pedals are an electronic musical instrument with a foot-operated pedal keyboard with a range of one or more octaves. The earliest bass pedals from the 1970s consisted of a pedalboard and analog synthesizer tone generation circuitry packaged together as a unit. The bass pedals are plugged into a bass amplifier or PA system so that their sound can be heard. Since the 1990s, bass pedals are usually MIDI controllers, which have to be connected to a MIDI-compatible computer, electronic synthesizer keyboard, or synth module to produce musical tones. Some 2010s-era bass pedals have both an onboard synth module and a MIDI output.
Mathias Peter Møller, commonly known as M.P. Möller or Moeller, was a prolific pipe-organ builder and businessman. A native of the Danish island of Bornholm, he emigrated to the United States in 1872 and founded the M.P. Moller Pipe Organ Company in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, in 1875. The city of Hagerstown, Maryland, took notice of Möller's early successes and induced him to move his business there in 1881 to help make it a viable business center in Western Maryland. The company remained in business in Hagerstown until 1992, with hundreds of employees at its peak and a lifetime production of over 12,000 instruments.
An expression pedal is an important control found on many musical instruments including organs, electronic keyboards, and pedal steel guitar. The musician uses the pedal to control different aspects of the sound, commonly volume. Separate expression pedals can often be added to a guitar amplifier or effects unit and used to control many different aspects of the tone.
The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the largest fully functioning pipe organ in the world, based on the number of playing pipes, the number of ranks and its weight. The Wanamaker Organ is located within a spacious 7-story Grand Court at Macy's Center City and is played twice a day Monday through Saturday. The organ is featured at several special concerts held throughout the year, including events featuring the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ Festival Chorus and Brass Ensemble.
Allen Organ Company LLC builds digital church organs, home organs, and theatre organs. Its factory is located in Macungie, Pennsylvania.
Central Music, Inc., founded in 1958 is a piano and organ dealer located in Clearwater, Florida. Central Music represents Rodgers Instruments, Fratelli Ruffatti, Blüthner, Hammond organ and Roland Corporation instruments. They serve Florida, Georgia and the Caribbean.
The Schoenstein Organ at the Conference Center is a pipe organ built by Schoenstein & Co., San Francisco, California located in the Conference Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. The organ was completed in 2003. It is composed of 160 speaking stops spread over five manuals and pedals. Along with the nearby Salt Lake Tabernacle organ, it is typically used to accompany the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. Schoenstein & Co.'s president and tonal director, Jack Bethards, describes it as "an American Romantic organ" that is "probably more English than anything else."
Ted Alan Worth was an American church and concert organist, recording artist, and entrepreneur of the pipe organ.
Martin Ellis is an American church, concert and theatre organist. He is currently the organist for Rose City Park Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. He was Principal Organist and Assistant Music Director at North United Methodist Church, and Senior Staff Pianist/Organist, Staff Arranger and Orchestrator for the Indianapolis Children's Choir and Youth Chorale in Indianapolis, Indiana until August, 2014. He works with Gresham High School's Theatre Arts Department as their resident piano accompanist.
The Castro Organ Devotees Association (CODA) is an American nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the tradition of live organ music in San Francisco's Castro Theatre. The theater is a popular San Francisco movie palace, built in the 1920s, which gained Historic Landmark status in 1976. The original Robert Morton organ was removed in the 1950s. The present organ, widely regarded as one of the finest theatre organs assembled, was assembled in the late 1970s using components from other organs, including its console, which was originally built in 1925 for the State Theatre in Detroit, Michigan to accompany silent pictures. The current console and organ were built by the Taylor family starting in 1979, and it has been owned and maintained by them since, but in 2014 they moved taking the console and one fourth of the pipework.
Johannus Orgelbouw is a Dutch builder of electronic organs for home and church use, located in Ede, Netherlands. The organ manufacturer was founded in 1968 by Johannes (Hans) Versteegt (1928–2011), who had previously designed electronic organs for Eminent and Viscount. The Johannus prototypes were developed in the facility at Prins Hendriklaan in Ede.
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