David E. Wallace & Co. LLC, Pipe Organ Builders of Gorham, Maine, is celebrating 30 years of restoring and building pipe organs.
Founded in 1982 as a pipe organ service company in southern Maine, the company has grown and has specialized primarily in the restoration and renovation of mechanical-action instruments. Many of the organs renovated by Wallace and Company are those that have been displaced from their original locations and relocated to new homes, where they continue to provide a traditional source of music in support of the worship service.
The changing musical environment for the pipe organ has brought about interesting relocations for some instruments over the years. Wallace and Company relocated a three-manual E. & G.G. Hook tracker from a church in Maine to a church in Belgium.
Other moves have been as short as seven miles, as was the case with the move of Estey Organ Company’s Opus 325 from Orono to Old Town, Maine. Wallace and Company also builds new organs and recently installed the firm’s Opus 66 at St. Paul’s Anglican Parish in Brockton, Massachusetts.
The current project in the Wallace shop is the restoration of Hook & Hastings Company Opus 1573 (1893), a three-manual organ built for St. Dominic’s Church in Portland, Maine. The completed instrument will be installed at Christ Church Episcopal in Rochester, New York, for the Eastman School of Music.
The Wallace and Company crew—Nicholas Wallace, Gwen Rowland, Seth Doyle, and David Wallace—will host an open house to celebrate the renewal of the Hook & Hastings organ and the 30th anniversary of the Wallace firm in mid May.
Details of the celebration will be available on the Wallace and Company website:
www.wallacepipeorgans.com.
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