Career Options
Keith Campbell: Working to a different tune"If you have a burning desire to work in awkward hot spaces with all kinds of finicky stuff, then this is the career for you," says Keith Campbell, an organ technician with Allan T. Jackson & Company Ltd. in Toronto. DOROTHEA HELMS |
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 [ 2002-09-25 ] |
"I've always felt a connection with old technology," says organ technician Keith Campbell.
Using skills that few Ontarians possess, Keith and five other technicians maintain 250 pipe organs across the GTA.
You're probably thinking -- ARE THERE 250 pipe organs across the GTA? According to Campbell, "Toronto is the city of churches, and every backwater church has a half-decent instrument."
The passionate technician started at Allan Jackson last November in a two-year apprenticeship. "I'm a fast study," he says, "but I know there's still a lot to learn."
These complicated instruments run on leather and wood, and have to be airtight in a myriad of ways. The expensive bits of leather must be stretched to just the right spot, and the leather valves adjusted. "You have to learn how the instrument works as one big entity," he says.
Despite having recurring nightmares about claustrophobia, one of the things that he says hooked him on the organ technician gig is climbing into those small spaces. "On my first job as a tuner I got stuck trying to weasel myself through, and it was exactly like my dreams. I survived, and I love working with organs -- so maybe I'm meant to do this."
Campbell is a pianist who has most of a French horn degree from McGill University. "Formal training taught me the fundamentals about temperament and tone, and how to listen."
Several years ago, he managed a piano store and tuned pianos. A man came into the store and begged Keith to train him in piano tuning. Ten years later, Campbell finds himself working for Allan Jackson.
"I'm a beach brat," says Campbell, who was born in Toronto and hails from a long line of technically excellent Scottish mechanics. "My grandad was a ship merchant marine engineer, and my dad worked in a factory keeping machines running."
To Campbell, repairing and maintaining pipe organs involves an interesting blend of technical aspects and art. "I've always felt a connection with old technology. Years ago, I started collecting all kinds of old machines -- typewriters from the twenties, pedal organs, phonographs that played 78s, sewing machines, bicycles -- and made them work. I'm not into power tools. I enjoy using old-fashioned skills verging on pioneering, but at a higher level of detail with planes, chisels and different glues for specific types of wood. This work is strictly traditional; we don't use synthetic adhesives or leathers."
Keith's technical skills were honed when he served as head mechanic at a bike school for a year and a half, and then when he spent time at woodwind repairs. As for the artistic component of pipe organ maintenance he finds so intriguing, "It agrees with me fundamentally -- I also paint, draw, write and compose."
As yet, there are no formal educational courses for those who want to become organ technicians. "It's a small field, and people come to it from a variety of backgrounds. If you really want to do this, call someone who's in the trade and speak with that person about apprenticeship opportunities. You should be familiar with music and you must be a perfectionist. When you're tuning, you hit the pipes with the tuning knife until everything sounds just right."
He advises would-be technicians to persevere. "Don't compromise your vision. I didn't know I was heading in this direction, but I knew I should fix things for a living."
Thanks to Keith Campbell and the select group of others who don't mind working in awkward hot spaces with finicky stuff, some of our most cherished examples of Ontario heritage will be preserved.
(Dorothea Helms (writer@wsws.ca) is an internationally published freelance writer who co-owns a communications firm with her husband.)
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