Art Beat with Rosalie Crawford

Tauranga's Mighty Wurlitzer – a 2/10 Wurlitzer Model H Opus 1482 – rose dramatically from beneath the stage at Baycourt Theatre to where a packed audience gathered to listen to Chris Powell perform.

What we heard though was a complete orchestra playing – all from two keyboards.

Chris Powell at Baycourt Theatre.

The Wurlitzer is a theatre organ consisting of an organ connected to hundreds of pipes, a piano keyboard, a xylophone, castanets, bells and drums. There are only three Wurlitzer organs in New Zealand.

Despite Baycourt providing a live video link, showing Chris playing, it is clear he must have five hands in order to play the two keyboards simultaneously while changing the instrument settings.

Easing into a song from the musical ‘Annie', he played piano in one hand, glockenspiel in the other; then brought in the woodwind section until we were hearing a full band.

A relaxed and enjoyable entertainer, he chatted with the audience between sets joking about his British background, informing us POM is an abbreviation of ‘Perfection of Mankind'.

His easy way with his listeners makes him a popular performer, and he went on to play many well-known songs such as ‘I could have danced all night' and ‘Misty', his tribute to Norm Freeman.

He's visited New Zealand many times, and spent 1996 in Tauranga as Baycourt's resident organist. Reminiscing about the time he and Norm worked on the refurbishment of the organ, they discovered the organ had a wind whistling sound, so set off to a local hardware shop to purchase pieces of piping which quickly fixed the problem with it still effective today.

A versatile musician, Chris played some of his Gershwin favourites, a selection from musicals such as ‘Phantom of the Opera', and finished the first half of the performance with popular numbers from Blackpool. During the second half of the show he played requests from the audience.

It was immensely enjoyable and a good reminder to me that in the 1920s the Wurlitzer organ was a revolutionary musical instrument and very cutting edge for its day – and in today's terms is the 1920s version of Musical Instrument Digital Interface technology.