The Orpheum’s Mighty Wurlitzer Organ has been a treasure to many a Memphis musician. “Everybody that has any dealings with this organ falls in love with it,” says Tony Thomas, who fell in love with the instrument the moment his fingers touched the keys. “This is not common anymore. We’re one of 12 theaters with a theater organ where the organ is in exactly the same place as it always was. … This organ has always been in the Orpheum Theatre, since its first time it ever was ever played [in 1928].”
Even as the organ celebrates its 95th birthday, it still has room for “firsts.” A few years ago it underwent its first rebuild, and this year, the organ was recorded commercially for the first time for the vinyl A Very Mighty Christmas, on which Thomas plays arrangements of beloved holiday classics, from the modern sensation “All I Want for Christmas Is You” to “Sleigh Ride” to Peanuts classics “Christmas Time Is Here” and “Skating” and many more. The album is produced by Orpheum Theatre Group COO Dacquiri Baptiste, Orpheum’s public relations director Kristin Bennett, Christopher Blank of WKNO-FM, and Matt Ross-Spang of Southern Grooves.
“You feel like you’re in the room when you listen to it on a good stereo system,” Thomas says of the vinyl. “It’s really hard to put in words what the effect is on the organ and the sound, and part of the sound is the room.”
To celebrate the album, which is available for purchase at orpheumgiftshop.com, the Orpheum is hosting a Wurlitzer Wonderland concert. Thomas, the resident Orpheum house organist, will play songs from A Very Mighty Christmas with special guests Curtis Jones and Jay Cox. Tickets for the Thursday concert will be sold at the door.
“I’ll just say that music in general, for me, should be an emotional experience,” Thomas says. “Somebody who is not really a musician should still get a feeling from hearing whatever the music they’re listening to. It doesn’t matter if it’s classical, or anything between that and rap. But, as an emotional experience, it is hard to top the range of expression that the theater organ provides a listener as opposed to any other kind of instrument that you can play singly … the tones and the combinations of sounds and the expression of the instrument. The loud and soft are so dramatic. It’s a technicolor musical experience, is what it is. And I would just want someone to come away from listening to this record, having been moved in some way and had the music not just be, Oh, there’s ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,’ but feel a lift in the music that makes them that gives them some joy.”
Wurlitzer Wonderland, Orpheum Theatre, 203 S. Main, Thursday, December 21, 7 p.m., $10.