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Everywhere else, it was pure hubbub. People snaked around the first two floors of Embassy Theatre, chatting, laughing and taking pictures of intricate decorations adorning Christmas trees lining the main halls of the old building as if they stood guard Saturday.
But in a nook upstairs, a small group kept back from Doug Rodenbeck. He was speaking only in hushed tones as his fingers moved across an organ keyboard, searching for the right notes to “Silent Night.” It was a song he learned long ago at Bethlehem Lutheran Church on South Anthony Boulevard.
“I haven’t played the organ in 20 years,” he said.
Rodenbeck played the song near perfectly as he demonstrated the pipe organ Christmas tree, one of the unique displays and already the winner of a best-in-show award at the Embassy’s 25th annual Festival of Trees.
Designed and built by the Embassy Theatre organ crew, a group of about 10 volunteers who work on the theater’s famed Grande Page Theatre Pipe Organ once a week, the setup includes much of what you’d find in a traditional organ. There’s a wind box, a compressor and tubing that connects to 25 pipes hung on a tree as well as a small computer.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Rodenbeck, who visited the display with his family.
Dyne Pfeffenberger, best remembered for saving the theater in the mid-1970s and an original member of the Embassy Theatre Foundation, asked the organ crew to come up with something special for this year’s festival. Ideas were batted around for a while. In May, members began designing the tree, said John Foell, an organ crew member who described most of the group as “a bunch of geeky engineers.”
In June, though, the 71-year-old Pfeffenberger died after suffering a fall at home. He was known as an accomplished pianist and organist who taught accounting at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne and served as the historian for the theater.
The crew dedicated the tree to his memory.
“We all liked Dyne a lot, and it was a real shock,” Foell said. “He was just a friend of anybody who had anything to do with music.”
In 1956, Pfeffenberger played onstage with organ great Buddy Nolan. He loved the 1,300-pipe Grande Page Organ, dubbed “Miss Page” by one crew member, and helped raise money to save the theater from ruin in 1975.
The pipe tree organ dedicated to him has some of the original workings that were inside the Grande Page in 1928, parts that no longer accommodate the modern playing of an organ and had to be taken out of the Embassy’s most famous instrument.
“We put hours a week in at the Embassy, and then we’d each take bits home and work on them at home,” Foell said of the building process. “It was quite a project. To tell you the truth, it all came together a week ago (today).”
Children were most drawn to the interactivity of the display Saturday. Many couldn’t resist trying to play simple songs on the small keyboard, and some stood next to the tree to feel the wind burst from the pipes. But adults like Rodenbeck were drawn to it, as well, and several times a group would arc around a player, listening to whatever song sprang from the pipes on the tree.
“We’re just tickled to death they did this for us,” said Steve Linsenmayer, the theater’s development director.
“So many times a Christmas tree goes untouched. It’s rare to have something this interactive hitting on all levels.”
