The Queensland Division of the Theatre Organ Society of Australia (TOSA) was formed in 1963. Today’s membership is over 200, with people from all walks of life included (from school students through to business professionals, musicians and retirees).
The Society owns a Christie theatre pipe organ which is located in the auditorium of the Kelvin Grove State College in Brisbane, Australia (map / location Google Maps). The Christie is a three manual, 11 rank organ and originally from the Granada Theatre in Maidstone, England.
Meetings are held on the first Sunday afternoon of each month at 2pm at the College auditorium with concerts by touring overseas and national artists held on many weekends throughout the year. Visits to other organ venues and members’ homes also occur.
Society members are encouraged to play the Christie (with tuition available) and become involved in its tuning and maintenance, concert running and other social aspects of the society. A digital theatre organ project is planned in the near future.
Originally developed in the early 1920s to accompany silent movies and provide mood music and sound effects, the organs were found in nearly every major theatre of the day. These organs were able to replace the large and costly orchestras originally used by theatres, and were sometimes called a “unit orchestra” with Wurlitzer being the most common make. By 1930 the advent of “talkies” made the use of organs redundant in their original form. However, theatre owners found that their patrons were attached to the organs and their music was used as entertainment at interval and bracketing the movie shows as a form of mini-concert.
Theatre pipe organs are different to church or classical organs in two main areas: they have tremulants in all ranks of pipes; they use a full range of percussion instruments and sound effects. The tremulants provide that mellow, sobbing effect to the pipes, similar to the vibrato of the human voice. Theatre organs use actual percussion instruments, such as drums, cymbals, xylophone, glockenspiel, chimes, castanets, sirens, bird whistles etc. — all operated with electro-pneumatic means by the organist at the console. One such organ (a Wurlitzer) was installed in 1929 in the old Regent Theatre in Brisbane, and is now located in the Cinematheque at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.