The Bedient crew returned to Iowa City this winter to reassemble a historically curious tracker organ at Trinity Episcopal Church.

The organ was removed as part of a major renovation project at Trinity that includes raising the sanctuary building to replace the 138-year-old foundation and revising the organ chamber. While most of the organ was stored in Iowa City, the remainder was brought to our Nebraska shop where Bedient craftspeople made numerous repairs including:

• Recover key tops with bone
• Repair casework, console and bench
• Repair and repaint facade pipes
• Repair trackers
• Modify swell box
• Refit/releather pipe stoppers and tuning sleeves
• Refurbish windchests

Our repairs are the latest in a long history of organ maintenance, renovation and replacement at Trinity. According to Organist Andrew Hicks’ essay chronicling the instruments at Trinity, the congregation has enjoyed organ music since 1862 when it purchased an Estey pump organ. Trinity may have been the site of Iowa’s first pipe organ, Hicks said, when a William A. Johnson’s Opus 201 was installed in 1866. That instrument was replaced in 1894 by another tracker, A. B. Felgemaker’s Opus 591.

An electropneumatic Kilgan replaced the Felgemaker in 1954, although pipes from the old tracker were retained. Finally, Hicks said, in 1983 Trinity replaced the Kilgan with the current instrument, a 1912 Pilcher (installed by George Bozeman), which had been displaced by the closing of a Methodist church in Ohio.

Looking at the organ today, one can clearly see the patchwork the organ has endured: Bozeman pipes within the cherry wood Felgemaker case that surrounds the quartered oak Pilcher console with gold painted Pilcher façade pipes topping it all. Yet, according to Hicks, “In its ninety-sixth year, and twenty-fifth year at Trinity, the Pilcher continues to provide a reliable foundation for the parish’s music and liturgy. With reasonable care, the instrument should last for generations to come.” Bedient Pipe Organ Company is proud to contribute to the survival of this historically significant instrument.