LOS ANGELES — She’s big. She’s brilliant. And boy, is she loud.
The Hazel Wright organ — affectionately known as Hazel — is billed as the fifth largest instrument in the world. As organist and head of music ministry at Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, David Ball spends a lot of time seated at Hazel’s keys, but he’s still in awe of her.
“I mean, it’s really an honor for an organist,” he said. “It’s an honor, and a dream come true.”
The massive instrument is a combination of three organs, including one from Lincoln Center in New York City. Her 17,000 pipes are meticulously maintained by nimble organ curator Kevin Cartwright, who regularly climbs 60 feet above the balcony to keep her humming.
A complete top-to-bottom tune up, he says, takes about six weeks.
“It’s a handful,” he admitted. “But we keep it in tune and keep it working.”
Those pipes are placed all around the cavernous cathedral — front, back and tucked into two corners — creating a unique surround sound experience. Hazel can whisper or roar as Ball literally pulls out all the stops to create new textures of sound.
“So when you buy your kids crayons, you have the eight pack,” Ball explained. “This is the not even the 64 pack. This is the 300 pack.”
All of those colors were on display last weekend as singers from more than a dozen mostly SoCal choirs and three children’s choruses joined Hazel in an Organ and Choral Festival presented by Mark Thallander Foundation to celebrate the memory of Dr. Frederick Swann, who passed away last year.
Swann came to Christ Cathedral in 1982 and, along with Hazel, played for an audience of millions of viewers during the Hour of Power services that were televised in more than a 150 countries.
Demonstrating Hazel’s many stops labeled with the names of different instruments and effects, Festival Organist Bradley Welch explained how they can be combined to create all kinds of composite sounds.
“It feels nearly limitless, the ways that we could combine sound,” he said. “Definitely in the millions.”
Welch, now the resident organist of the Dallas symphony, grew up watching Dr. Swann play and later, began writing him letters. Pulling out his phone, he scrolls to find a photo taken thirty years during their first face-to-face meeting, when Swann allowed him to play Hazel for about twenty minutes.
“Although I never studied with him, I studied what he did so closely,” he explained. “I feel like I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for his inspiration and the things that I learned from him.”
He describes Swann as wise, witty and generous, and during the concert played some of the pieces Swann himself composed—some of which are on display in a public exhibit on campus. Welch’s organs in Texas — though impressive — are only a third the size of Hazel, and he was honored to throw his hands and feet into playing the instrument in celebration of Dr. Swann’s legacy.
“I think then there’s just something intangible about the sound of the organ and the sound of a great choir well prepared that feels like the gates of heaven are opening,” Welch said.
He knows Hazel is in good hands with Ball, who was also inspired by Dr. Swann when he too watched the Hour of Power.
“On YouTube, actually, since I’m a millennial,” he laughed.
“Just watching him make gorgeous music on this instrument really inspired me and generations of organists,” Ball said of Swann. “We hope the organ continues to do that.”
That’s Swann’s legacy, he says. The music he composed, the services he plays and the generations of musicians seated at organs around the country who studied his playing and now follow in his footsteps.