A maestro comes to Fort Lee: Catch this Radio City organist in North Jersey

Transplanting an organ is delicate.

Transplanting an organist, less so.

George Wesner, principal organist at Radio City Music Hall, doesn't mind an occasional house call. His visit to the Barrymore Film Center at Fort Lee Sunday, where he'll be doing a special concert program on the center's Allen electronic organ at 2:30 p.m., ought to delight anyone with an ear for music — and a taste for the kind of novelty that only a full theater organ, with a panoply of sounds that range from harp, glockenspiel and hand bells to a fire siren and a policeman's whistle, can satisfy.

"This is 90 minutes of outstanding music that they can sing along with, or not," said Wesner, a Clifton native. "It's about inspiration. We have enough junk in the world today."

Mix of music

The program will include tributes to George Gershwin and Rodgers and Hammerstein, a patriotic medley, a scholastic selection (at the Music Hall, he performs at a lot of graduations) and a tribute to the music of J.S. Bach and Andrew Lloyd Webber. "You never usually hear them together," he said.

As he plays, images of his fingerwork will appear on the Barrymore Center's 20-by-40-foot movie screen, along with other visuals related to the music. Rather than accompanying a movie, the images in the “George Wesner live at the Barrymore" program will accompany him.

"That's a switch," he said.

He will also, he says, provide commentary — much of it relating to his 40-year career at Radio City. "I don’t want to compare myself to anybody else, but it's kind of like a Victor Borge kind of thing, where they guy plays really well but he also has some bits of humor, some stories he can tell."

The sound of the silents

Back before sound film — but after the earliest days of the nickelodeons, when the old-fashioned "flickers" were accompanied by a tinny piano — the sound of the movie theater was the organ.

"I really feel that the organ was the soul of the theater," said Nelson Page, executive director of the Barrymore Film Center, the $16 million repertory theater and museum that opened on Fort Lee last October in tribute to the city's Barrymore acting dynasty, and its historic role in the development of the movie industry.

"It's important to showcase the organ itself," Page said. "And I couldn't think of any better person to have here than George."

The Barrymore, in fact, may be the first movie theater built since the 1920s to include an orchestra pit — a space for the musicians who would accompany the film during its big screenings, and for the theater organ that would take over during the matinees.

The big "movie palaces" had enormous consoles, with hundreds of pipes and banks of keyboards, and an array of "special effects" that ranged from gunshots to doorbells to rainstorms. After sound came in, many of these theaters retained their organs for sing-alongs and intermezzos.

Pulling out the stops

The biggest of them, Radio City's giant Wurlitzer, installed in 1932, had four keyboards and 4,178 pipes. That's the one Wesner has been playing since 1981: 5,000 shows, before 30 million people. But the Barrymore's three-keyboard model should do just fine on Sunday, thank you.

"Both instruments are so versatile you can play a classical program, you can play a pop program, you can play a wide range of things" he said.

He got the Radio City gig almost by accident. He had been teaching music at the Parsippany-Troy Hills school district and was also the organist with the Brookdale Christian Church in Bloomfield.

"We put in a rebuilt pipe organ there, and the man who did the work was also curator of the organ at Radio City Music Hall," Wesner said. "He heard me play, and he said, why don't you come over and try the organ at Radio City. I had no idea they were looking for someone."

In his years at Radio City, he's become almost as much of a fixture as the Rockettes. He's worked with such stars as Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, Bob Hope, and Whoopi Goldberg. He's participated in some of the big gala events for which the world's most famous movie theater plays host.

"At the Grammy awards at Radio City in 1988, I came out of the stage door and onto the red carpet in a tuxedo, and someone said, 'Who is that?' Another producer said, 'I don't know. But get a picture in case he's someone.' "

“George Wesner Live at the Barrymore." 2:30 p.m. Sunday Sept 24 at the Barrymore Film Center, 153 Main Street, Fort Lee. 201 585-0601 or barrymorefilmcenter.com. $20.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Radio City Music Hall comes to Barrymore Center in Fort Lee NJ