Brendan Glasson “‘The Reality of People’ and Other Works for Reed Organ” CD (Debacle)

Brendan’s new album is a collection of pieces built around the reed organ, an instrument that was once ubiquitous in the United States around the turn of the 20th century. Brendan has a deep passion for reed organs and has acquired two of them, both of which he found on Craigslist. One is a Carl Fischer “Pipe Tone” folding reed organ made in 1904, and the other, which this album was recorded on, is an Estey “Model O” chapel organ made in 1912. He is also a member of the Reed Organ Society, a community of enthusiasts who love these historical instruments. He has a deep understanding of the mechanics and history of the reed organ and often does his own repairs, maintenance, and tuning. Brendan likens the organ to a synthesizer, with tone generators in the form of brass reeds and the “swell” that acts as a low-pass filter cutting off high frequencies as a gasket or door opens and closes.

The pieces were built around the moments he found when playing the reed organ at home, where certain combinations of pitches would activate the instrument, and sometimes a prominent overtone would resonate, or a loose screw would start rattling, or the whole instrument would start vibrating sympathetically.

Conceptually, Brendan has drawn inspiration from Oliver Sacks’ idea that one’s sense of reality is constructed by “the reality of people” and Helen Keller’s essays on sense perception. He aimed to make music that activates that kind of augmented deep sensory experience.