Tuesday, July 20, 2004 | 8:21 a.m.
It was a fortuitous road trip.
Four years ago a committee from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas headed to Southern California.
Its mission was to listen to a pipe organ similar to one it hoped to purchase for the school.
After logging 650 organ-related e-mails and communicating with 18 organ builders worldwide, the committee headed to a Catholic church in Hacienda Heights.
But it would be a last-minute unscheduled stop that proved the trip a success. More specifically, a von Beckerath pipe organ at Pomona College.
"We had been looking and listening to see what we could find," said UNLV's Music Department Chair Isabelle Emerson, one of four who made the organ journey.
"This one just blew us away. Dr. (Paul) Hesselink and I went to Hamburg to talk with the builders."
Four years later the organ is nearly complete in the recital hall at Beam Music Center, where German workers are filling its case with pipes - 16 feet long to a little more than 1/4 inch in length.
"It's going to be a shot in the arm for the organ culture in Las Vegas," Emerson said of the organ, which was made possible by Ed Smith in honor of his late wife, Maurine, a UNLV alumni, who was an organist for the Mormon church.
"Organs are so expensive and organists are so dependent on churches to practice. It will just awaken a lot of interest in the instrument."
With more than 4,000 pipes, 38 stops and 53 ranks, the three-manual organ, built in Germany over the past three years and shipped to the United States, will be the largest such instrument in Nevada. Moreover, it is a dream come true for organ enthusiasts, some of whom hold master's degrees in the instrument.
"You'll get a really broad spectrum of players and talent," said Bede Parry, dean for the Southern Nevada Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and organist for All Saints Episcopal Church, which has drawn big names, but not a lot of publicity, for its organ recitals.
And if there are any concerns of the wind instrument's demise in an age where guitars and contemporary music are replacing the classical sacred pieces pumped through an organ, Parry says not to worry.
"Composers are writing for the organ to this day, constantly. The organ is not waning. If anything, the organ has gained in popularity in the last 20 years. It is venturing into new realms -- contemporary music and orchestra."
Compared to older cities, Las Vegas has a lower number of organs. But Raymond J. Barnes, who co-founded the local chapter for the American Guild of Organists in 1968, said the number is steadily increasing.
"When I came here there were only two pipe organs, one at First Methodist and one at Christ Episcopal," Barnes said. "In 1972 the Mormon church started putting pipe organs in their churches. We have four people who have pipe organs in their homes."
The local chapter lists all of the area's pipe organs on its Web site: 22 instruments at churches, LDS stake centers and chapels, and 14 home, studio and theatre organs.
The guild, which has more than 60 members, also sponsors "Pipe Dreams," an organ program produced by Minnesota Public Radio, which is broadcast Sunday evenings at 10 on KCNV 89.7-FM.
"We're hoping we're building an audience," said Hesselink, an executive board member of the guild, organ teacher at UNLV and dean at the Nevada School of the Arts who has nine students studying the organ, including one majoring in the instrument.
Hesselink holds three degrees in the organ -- a bachelor of arts, a master's in pedigology and a doctorate in performance -- and hopes that the pipe organ at UNLV will pick up steam in the next few years.
Its presence is expected to add a new level of prestige to the college's music program and enrich its concert offerings, including a monthly recital series.
"For us it makes a strong statement that we're really growing as a college, that something like this is added to the resources we have," Jeff Koep, dean of fine arts at UNLV, said.
"The pipe organ is not something that many institutions can say they offer. It really provides students at UNLV an opportunity to work on something they just wouldn't have otherwise here or many of the institutions in the United States," Koep said.
It was an organ at Columbia University in New York that changed the path for Emerson, who had trained as a pianist.
"I went to college and I heard a really smashing organ for the first time in my life," Emerson said. "I was the organist there at Columbia for eight years."
Emerson also studied piano at The Juilliard School and organ at the Hochschule fur Musik in Germany. She's been teaching the organ on and off since 1979, but hasn't taught in the past four or five years. She plans to return to teaching when the new organ is complete.
Her favorite music?
"Oh -- of course. Bach!" Emerson exclaimed. "The sound is just an exhilarating sound. There's nothing that can quite describe the exhilaration."
This is why Ed Smith chose to donate the $500,000 gift for the instrument.
"The organ was a passion for my mother," Maurine's son, Greg Smith, said. "There are some really talented people in the valley. She was in awe of them.
"She would spend hours practicing. Hours and hours ... Her training was as a pianist. The organ was a completely different instrument.
"She spent a good deal of her time studying with accomplished organists. And she, over time, became a very accomplished organist herself."
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