Joan Phillips, the interim organist, plays the new pipe organ, which was made by the Ortloff Organ Co., at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cape Elizabeth. After many years of planning and over a year of construction, parishioners and the public are invited to hear it for the first time at two concerts this weekend. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

CAPE ELIZABETH — Parishioners at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church realized about five years ago that the pipe organ inside their place of worship was no longer able to do its job, no matter who was playing it.

They needed an honest assessment of whether to repair or replace the 50-year-old instrument and commissioned a local organ mechanic, David Wallace, whose resume includes upkeep on the massive Kotzschmar organ inside Merrill Auditorium.

“He pretty much told us, ‘Do you really want to put a new transmission and engine into that 1985 Ford pickup?’ ” recalled Robert Stoddard, who was a relatively new church member but one with a deep background in music. “That led to a real discussion in our parish about the role of music. Do we need an organ here? And the strong sense was that, yes, the pipe organ does mean something in the Episcopal tradition.”

So, the church decided it would replace the organ, but that’s hardly like going to a music store and taking one from the shelf. Only a few dozen firms in the country build pipe organs.

After raising enough money through a capital campaign and putting out a request for proposals, St. Alban’s selected a builder close to home: Jonathan Ortloff of Needham, Massachusetts.

“Our explicit goal was to have a pipe organ that was there to support worship, not a showpiece,” Stoddard said.

Ortloff said he knew within minutes of talking to the folks at St. Alban’s that he’d be the right fit.

“They didn’t want something overly fancy, just a very good product, and I said, ‘These are my people,’ ” he said.

Jonathan Ortloff works on tonal finishing with the new pipe organ at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cape Elizabeth. The 19-stop, 25-rank Opus 3 organ has 1491 pipes, according to Ortloff, whose company installed the organ in March and April. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Ortloff, 36, grew up around music. He started playing piano at a young age and also surprised his parents by fixing a broken vacuum cleaner around the same time.

“I have always been equally left- and right-brained,” he said.

In high school, a teacher assigned students to interview someone and write a story. Ortloff picked a local organ builder, which led to him taking a job at the man’s shop. He fell in love with it immediately and eventually opened his own business in 2014.

The process of building a pipe organ is lengthy because each is custom-made. First, Ortloff had to design an instrument based on the specifications of the church. Then he had to build it, with help from six of his employees, in his shop in Massachusetts, only to disassemble it, pack each pipe individually, deliver them to Cape Elizabeth and install them in the space.

The design work alone was 1,000 hours. The construction took about 18 months.

“A pipe organ is unlike any other musical instrument,” Ortloff said. “This organ contains 1,491 pipes, each of which is an individual instrument. And they are all made by hand. No machinery can automate that.”

David Schopp makes adjustments on the pipes in the new organ at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cape Elizabeth. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

The organ’s casing and console was constructed of white oak; the pipes from various alloys of lead and tin, zinc, aluminum and wood. The largest pipe is more than 16 feet; the smallest, less than a quarter-inch.

Once the organ was installed, there was one more step, called tonal finishing, which occurred over a series of days this month. It involved playing every note, one at a time, and having someone listen so that adjustments can be made. The organ can produce the sounds of entire orchestra – flutes, strings, trumpets, trombones, oboes, even bells.

St. Alban’s church raised about $1.4 million during its 2019 capital campaign, half of which paid for the new organ, the other half for improving social programming.

The Rev. Joshua Hill, the church’s rector, said there is tremendous excitement among parishioners.

“I’ve been in churches my whole life, but never in one with a brand new organ,” he said.

Hill said music has always been a major component of the Episcopal tradition.

“That has been manifested in choral music supported by an organ,” he said. “And more than a piano or other instruments, the organ music supports singing very well. It accompanies the congregation, not just tonal qualities but its volume too.”

The new organ is meant to support parishioners and the music they sing each week, but the hope is that it belongs to the broader community as well.

“When people think of pipe organs, they think of things that live in churches,” Stoddard said. “And that’s true, of course, but it’s also a fabulous instrument. We’d love for it to be more than just something our parish hears on Sundays.”

Phillips, the interim organist, points out details on the new pipe organ. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

With that in mind, St. Alban’s is hosting a pair of dedication concerts, open to the public, this coming weekend and has invited world-class musicians to show off what the pipes can produce.

The first concert will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday, led by Christopher Jacobson of Duke University. Jacobson has played organ recitals throughout the U.S. and Europe and has served as assistant organist at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

The second concert, at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, will feature Maine’s own Katelyn Emerson. The 2010 graduate of York High School won first prize in the American Guild of Organists’ National Young Artists’ Competition in 2016, not long after she graduated from Oberlin College and Conservatory.

Since then, she has played in venues all over the world and has been a guest performer of the Kotzschmar organ in Portland. She lives in Illinois, where her husband works as (what else?) an organ builder.