St Mark Lutheran Church, Anchorage, Alaska
Portativ - designed and built by Roy Helms of Anchorage, Alaska
Comments below by Bob Schmidt
As of this writing (April, 2000), little is known of the background of this Portativ organ, supposedly designed and built by Roy Helms of Anchorage, Alaska.
As has been related to me, it was constructed in the mid-70's as a demonstration of what a pipe organ would, or could, sound like in St Mark Lutheran Church. Ultimately, the St Mark congregation decided to have a pipe organ built for their sanctuary (1983) and the Kenneth Jones Tracker is the result.
Subsequently, the Helms Portativ has made the rounds of several Anchorage churches. In addition, it has been used by various performing arts ensembles - most notably the Anchorage Festival of Music and the Alaska Chamber Singers. It sat in storage for several years in a garage until January 2000 when St Mark was approached to see if they wanted the instrument. The response was an immediate "yes"! The instrument now sits in St Mark's balcony.
The short-term plan is to find out the true story (and wanderings) of this wonderful little instrument, and then put those facts on this page. Longer term plans call for re-housing the instrument in custom-made case and to use it for various liturgical and recital purposes.
If any reader has more information on this instrument, please contact Bob Schmidt (click on his name).
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March 30, 2005: courtesy of the builder himself, here's the real story on this instrument:
On a whim, I put my name in Google, and up came the information about the portative organ at St. Mark.
The organ was started as an extension of an independent study course I was taking at Pacific Lutheran University in 1964. I casually asked the instructor, Dr. R. Byard Fritts, if it would be possible for me to build a pipe organ.
The keyboard came from a junked harmonium, altered with springs and with electrical contacts added. The windchest was of new construction. The blower was made from a kit designed to provide air to a harmonium.
The original design was to have all wooden pipes. After two years of cutting, sanding and gluing, they were about half completed when I was drafted into the US Army (1966). The organ parts went into a crate to sit in my parents' garage in Idaho for several years.
In 1975 I was working for the Alaska State Council for the Arts. Polly Norman was the organist at Central Lutheran Church, had been a student of mine and I had built a house pipe organ for her. (That organ was enlarged and moved to Central Lutheran Church in 1977 where it is still in service). We decided it would fun to complete the portative and use it for two organ compositions at Central Lutheran.
The wooden pipes had not worked out well, tonally, so they were abandoned and a metal Rohr Flute was ordered from Holland. The finished woodwork for the console was never completed and the music rack is still a temporary fix, the retired music rack from the organ at Fort Richardson.
The first performance was Easter Sunday, 1975, one of the Solare Organ Concertos.
I left Alaska for a job in Washington D.C. in 1978. The organ was donated to St. Mark Lutheran with the understanding that its use was to encourage the appreciation of pipe organs and church music. If and when it was no longer needed at St. Mark, it should go to another church that aspired to own a pipe organ.
Roy Helms
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This instrument has been 'rebuilt' into a new choir organ - follow this link to learn more....
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