/  Home  /  Inside KJZZ  /  Wave newsletter  /  Spring 2004 newsletter

The Fabulous Fritts

Hosted by Jim Weaver

The Fabulous Fritts, presented in collaboration with the KBAQ production studios at Arizona State University, is aired every Saturday at 7 pm on KBAQ 89.5 FM.  The program offers performances on the magnificent Paul Fritts and Company organ housed at ASU.  Designed on historical principles and adaptable to many styles of music - especially those of Bach and his contemporaries - the Fritts was installed in 1992 in the ASU School of Music Organ Hall, which was built especially for its use. It has already achieved legendary stature among organists throughout the nation, and each year several of them travel to Tempe to perform on it before the packed houses that are a hallmark of ASU's Organ Concert series.  Their performances, and those of Arizona's top organists, make The Fabulous Fritts an enjoyable gateway to the world of "the royal instrument."

The Fritts organ
While a thoroughly up-to-date instrument, the Fritts organ is strongly influenced by historic practice, as may be noted in the use of mechanical (tracker) key action, the presence of a functional and decorative case, and a style of voicing derived from the High Baroque instruments of northern Europe.  Tracker action makes possible the most intimate contact between player and instrument.  While tracker action was obviously the only possibility for Baroque organs, it was just as much the norm for the great Romantic instruments of France, Germany and England.  A major movement in North America, especially since about 1970, has been the return of tracker action in modern instruments. Just as period instruments have become, for many informed listeners, a preferred venue for performance of music of the past, the historic organ brings a special vitality to the organ music of earlier periods.

Except for a few hardware items, the Fritts organ is virtually handcrafted, representing some 13,000 hours of individual labor.  Each of the 1900 pipes, including the burnished tin pipes of the facade, were made in the Fritts shop in Tacoma, Washington.  The process of casting the metal, forming sheets, hammering and cutting the metal and finally forming the pipes, is the same now as it was many hundreds of years ago. The rich carvings were executed by Judy Fritts, sister of the builder.  They were first carved in basswood, then enameled, and finally gilded with 24K gold leaf. 

Jim Weaver, host of The Fabulous Fritts
Jim Weaver has been associated with historic instruments and performance programs at the Smithsonian Institution since 1966, where he founded and directed the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society - a residency program whose musicians perform on many of the historic instruments of the museum collections. At the Smithsonian, he has overseen activities relating to exhibitions; publications; the performance of and historical documentation of chamber music, jazz, American popular music, and music of oral tradition; and historic instrument collections.  Jim was a founding faculty member of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and was instrumental in developing the Early Music Practice degree program at the University of Maryland.  He has hosted the organ series The Fabulous Fritts since 1995.