I have always enjoyed the pipe organ. When I was very young I liked to go to church with my grandmother to hear the pipe organ at Our Lady of Refuge in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1978 my interest in the organ was further fueled at a summer camp in East Hebron, New Hampshire. A camp counselor, Karl Bengston, played a Virgil Fox LP of Bach's "Jig Fugue" recorded live at the Filmore East. After that I was hooked on the organ and switched from piano to organ lessons.

In 1971, my parents moved and Our Lady of Refuge in Brooklyn became our parish church. My mother had the organist show me the church's 3-manual 24-rank Kilgen instrument, which barely functioned at the time and soon stopped working all together. In addition to taking lessons, I resolved myself to repairing this organ. The first order of business was to restore the blower room regulator that had blown its gussets and one pair of ribs. Soon I found that this was only the tip of the iceberg. When the organ was first winded, I was greeted with hundreds of ciphers. So, as a 17-year-old, in 1984-'85 I spent my free time in my parents' basement releathering the bottom board pouches with guidance from Allen Dreyfuss, a local organ technician. I paid for the leather out of my own allowance.

1985 was the time to visit different colleges. I had read about the magnificent brand-new Taylor and Boody Organ at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts. My family was passing through Worcester and Mom decided that we should stop and see the organ. At that time I met either John Boody or George Taylor, the organbuilders, and was invited to sit down and play. It was not too long after this that I met the organ professor, James David Christie. The other colleges I looked at were Syracuse University and the University of Notre Dame. In the end, I decided to attend Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana studying business and organ. I studied organ with Craig Cramer on a 1978 Holtkamp instrument.

It was at Notre Dame - home of "The Fighting Irish" - that the seeds for my organ CD business were planted through the school's nationally-ranked American football team. Notre Dame played 6-7 home football games in a stadium that seated about 60,000 fans. It was always sold out and almost all of the games were nationally broadcast on one of the major television networks. If 60,000 people used to fill the stadium (this is before the stadium was beautifully and very tastefully expanded to seat about 80,000) an additional 40,000 people would come to South Bend to try to get into the game. College students of my day would make up a T-shirt having to do with the specific rivalry of the week and sell them around campus to the mobs of people jamming the campus.

Notre Dame is the top Roman Catholic University in the United States. Her biggest rival during the late 1980's was the University of Miami. In 1987, the students of Notre Dame began to actively hate those of Miami 365 days before we were to play Miami in the fall of 1988 in South Bend (note that this is not a very Catholic sentiment). One of my classmates came up with a brilliant idea for a T-shirt targeted at the Notre Dame versus Miami crowd. The shirt said in big letters: "Catholics vs. Convicts". He mobilized and organized a sales force to sell the T-shirts, arranged to accept credit card payment and even got Sports Illustrated to write about his product. Sports Illustrated went so far as to feature a prominent picture of the T-shirt in their magazine after Notre Dame won the game.It was rumored that this young entrepreneur made enough money from selling the shirts to pay for his entire college education. His brilliant scheme sowed a seed in my mind from which I would later reap great benefits.

I graduated from Notre Dame in 1990 with a degree in Business and a minor in Music. Right after graduation I went to the American Guild of Organists' National Convention held in Boston. The convention issue of The American Organist magazine had an amazing history of the Æolian, Skinner, and Aeolian-Skinner organ companies. I was fascinated. At Nelson Barden's shop at Boston University, I was totally taken with the demonstration of the Aeolian and Skinner residence organs that were set up and playing. I went back 2 or 3 times to hear Mr. Barden lecture and demonstrate these amazing instruments. These organs were impeccably restored; their tone was so much more beautiful then the Kilgen in my parish church or the organs at Notre Dame.

At Nelson Barden's shop I experienced the planting of another seed in conjunction with my introduction to the work of Ernest M. Skinner. I was very excited to meet Jonathan Ambrosino, the author of the article that I was so taken with. Thomas Murray was present one night as well. I had always thought Professor Murray's recordings from Woolsey Hall at Yale University were amazing, so I was overjoyed when Jonathan introduced me to Professor Murray. Then as now, I admit to being a Tom Murray groupie!

After graduation and the AGO Convention I went to work in the business world as a stockbroker. I realized I was not good enough at the organ to play for anyone, let alone for a church! Shortly after graduating I purchased my first excellent pair of Neumann microphones. Every Sunday I would go to St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and record Gerre Hancock, Michael Kleinschmidt and the St. Thomas Choir at the Choral Eucharist. I made good recordings. Then, without introduction, I began to call different churches in New York to see if they wanted to hire me to record organ concerts and recitals. In 1992, out of the blue, I called the Riverside Church and left a message for Tim Smith, then interim organist and music director. He called me back! That summer he hired me to record a recital he played, from then on he often hired me to work at the church.

Being a rookie stockbroker, I spent a lot of time "cold calling" customers whose money I was hoping to invest. I spent a good deal of time phoning Ohio using an industrial directory. While using this book, I ran across a maker of organ pipes, A.R. Schopp's Sons, Inc. I thought it would be a good idea to have the owner as one of my clients. I called A.R. Schopp's Sons, Inc., got through to Bob Schopp's secretary, Janet, and then got Bob Schopp on the line. After about one minute he hung up on me! For an entire year I kept calling him. I was determined that he would be my client! Then, he finally gave me an order to buy some stock and became one of my customers. Soon after we became friends. In later years his company would help sponsor many of my organ projects.

After getting ongoing recording work at the Riverside Church, I was hired by Justin Bischof to record a recital at the Church of the Heavenly Rest where he was then the assistant organist. Justin and I later became friends. It was a year before the 1996 American Guild of Organists' National Convention to be held in New York City. Hopefully, there would be several thousands of organists in attendance. I thought back to Notre Dame and the football game T-shirts we used to make. Why not make and market the perfect souvenirs for organists to take home?

In March of 1995 down with Justin at Vivolo on 74th Street - his favorite small Italian restaurant - and we plotted our strategy. A combination of talents made "GOONY" - Great Organs of New York - a reality. I brought and operated the recording equipment. Justin used his musical skills to produce the sessions. A.R Schopp's Sons, Inc. gave financial sponsorship. Sixteen months, uncounted all-nighters and about $100,000 later some 3700 copies of our new Compact Disc arrived in a tractor trailer at Justin's new church only a few days before the convention was due to start. Justin's Rector, Father Allan Warren, was remarkably good-hearted about all of this!

Our 4 CD set featured a 140-page booklet documenting 23 of New York City's most famous organs with 27 of the city's foremost artists playing them. During the preceding 16 months everything that could go wrong did, but in the end it was a triumph. It was not quite as good as sell Notre Dame football t-shirts, but we did sell a copy to almost every one of the 3000 people that attended the convention during those 4 days.

Justin and I subsequently decided to go our own ways. He founded Ethereal Recordings and shortly thereafter, in February of 1997, I founded JAV Recordings.

I decided to do a documentary series of what I believed to be the best electropneumatic pipe organs built during the 20th century - those made by the Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner Companies under the leadership of Ernest M. Skinner and G. Donald Harrison. So, in April of 1998 I quit my job on Wall Street and embarked upon the life of a self-employed entrepreneur. Great Organs of America: A Retrospective was my first project. Since that time, JAV Recordings has produced choral CDs and CDs of modern organs as well, such as the discs from the Riverside Church and recordings of some fine new mechanical-action organs as built by the Taylor & Boody and Rosales firms.

Making a documentary of Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner organs was what I first and foremost wanted to do. Almost 4 years later I have nearly achieved my goal with only 6 volumes of the eventual 16-volume set that remain to be completed. I will then have preserved for history some of the finest original and unaltered examples of 20th-century American organbuilding art.

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