The Overture Concert Organ is the gift of Pleasant T. Rowland. The Overture Concert Organ was made possible through an unprecedented $2.95 million in private contributions to the MSO: $1.1 million from Pleasant T. Rowland for the instrument and its unique movable chamber; $1 million from Diane Endres Ballweg for programming and education; $500,000 from an anonymous donor to endow the Wayne Curtis & Maybelle Slavens Hall and Francis Vincent & Lettie von Kalweit Dunnebacke Organ Curatorship (a position held by MSO Resident Organist Samuel Hutchison); and gifts from the Malmquist family and an additional anonymous donor.

After a worldwide search that ended in July 2001, a team of MSO staff, board members and acousticians selected Orgelbau Klais in Bonn, Germany, to build the Overture Concert Organ. Learn more.

The Overture Concert Organ consists of 63 stops, 72 ranks and 4,040 pipes, the tallest of which is 32 feet and the heaviest weighing in at more than 1,200 pounds. The organ took nearly three years to design and build. Including its unique movable chamber, the organ weighs in at 174 tons and is believed to be the heaviest movable object in any theater in the world. Learn more.

The MSO's Overture Concert Organ arrived in pieces on five semi-trucks in early March 2004. Learn more.

Samuel Hutchison is the Principal Organist and Curator for the Madison Symphony Orchestra where he plays the MSO's 72-rank Overture Concert Organ built by Orgelbau Klais of Bonn, Germany. His position as the Wayne Curtis & Maybelle Slavens Hall and Francis Vincent & Lettie von Kalweit Dunnebacke Curator is endowed by an anonymous donor. Learn more.

View the Overture Concert Organ Stop List and Specifications and learn more about this extraordinary instrument here.

If you stacked all the organ pipes end to end, they would reach 1.58 miles or 8,342 feet, the height of almost 6 Empire State Buildings! Learn more.

Overture Concert Organ Brochure
Friends of the Overture Concert Organ Brochure
One-page Organ Fact Sheet
Organ Specifications

Even though these are low-resolution PDF files, some of them are quite large. Please be patient while downloading. You will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to view these files. It's a fast and free download.