William P. “Bill” Brown died February 2 at his home in Phoenix, Arizona. Born in Battle Creek in 1925 and raised in Columbus, he attended New Mexico Military Institute for high school and college, where he was known as “WP,” and went to Japan with the Army during World War II. Upon his return, he took his MBA at Wharton, then began a career in real estate development. Over the years, he served on the Phoenix Planning Commission, held many offices for the Downtown YMCA and Midtown Rotary, and was active in the Phoenix Ski Club and NMMI and UPenn alumni groups.
Brown may best be known as the owner of the Organ Stop Pizza restaurants, and was an accomplished pianist and theatre organist in his own right. With his restaurants, he entertained vast numbers of people, brought the theatre organ and its music into the vernacular, launched the careers of many artists, and inspired and helped others to create similar restaurants across the country. He was a leader and active participant in all the major theatre organ organizations and also supported the installation of dozens of organs in the valley and across the country, including Phoenix’s Orpheum Theatre. Memorial services were held at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Phoenix, February 10. He is survived by his two sons, daughter, and five grandchildren.
Michael Fleming died January 10 in Surrey, England. Former Warden of the Royal School of Church Music, he was director of music at St. Alban’s, Holborn 1980–98, and had served at several well-known London churches.
Fleming was born April 8, 1928 in Oxford, where his father, Guy Fleming, was curate at the Anglo-Catholic St. Mary Magdalen’s. His grandfather, Arthur Fleming, was Precentor of Gloucester Cathedral and headmaster of the cathedral school. Michael Fleming started organ lessons at age 12 at St. Austell in Cornwall. After National Service he studied music at Durham University, was organist of St. Oswald’s, and had organ lessons with Francis Jackson. Fleming served as organist and choirmaster at St. Giles, Cambridge, and continued organ lessons with George Guest. During his two years as organist of Chingford Church in Essex, he studied with Harold Darke. In 1958 he was appointed director of music at All Saints Margaret Street in London, where he taught in its choir school. A decade later, he moved to Croydon Parish Church and became a full-time tutor at nearby Addington Palace, then home of the Royal School of Church Music. Ten years later, he moved to St. Mary’s, Primrose Hill. In 1980, Fleming was apppointed director of music at St. Alban’s, Holborn.
After retirement from the RSCM in 1993, he continued on the governing bodies of both the English Hymnal Company and the Church Music Society. In 1998, he left Holborn to become director of music at St Michael’s in Croydon. His numerous arrangements for hymns include settings with trumpets and drums. In 1999 he was awarded an MA Lambeth degree “in recognition of his contribution to church music and liturgy.”
Hiroshi Tsuji, Japan’s pioneer organbuilder, passed away on December 22, 2005, at the age of 72, in Shirakawa. He is survived by his wife, Toshiko, a daughter, Megumi Wolter, who presently lives in Berlin, Germany, and three grandchildren. Born in Aichi-ken in 1933, Tsuji showed an early interest in music, and later attended Geijutsu Daigaku (“Gei Dai”) music school in Tokyo, studying organ and graduating in 1958. While there he realized that tinkering with the school’s old organ interested him as much as playing it, and shortly afterward came to the United States, where he apprenticed with the Schlicker Organ Co. in Buffalo 1960–1963. He then went to Holland, where he apprenticed for another year with D. A. Flentrop, studied some of the historic organs, and became convinced of the importance of classical voicing and tracker action.
Returning to Japan in 1964, he established a small workshop in a Tokyo suburb, where he built a few small organs in the “neo-classic” style. Although in this period organs were already being imported to Japan, mostly from Germany, Tsuji was the first native Japanese craftsman to engage full-time in organ-building. In 1971 he returned briefly to Europe to continue his study of historic organs, and shortly afterward moved to the mountain town of Shirakawa, where he established a workshop in a spacious former schoolhouse. By this time he was securing some larger contracts and had several people working for him, some of whom later established workshops of their own.
Tsuji early made a commitment to basing his instruments on historic European models, at first only in the North German style. Later, in the early 1980s, encouraged by Umberto Pineschi and Yuko Hayashi, he went to Italy and became intrigued with the sound of historic organs in Tuscany. In 1982 he restored a small organ of 1762 in Pistoia, and also made a replica of it, which was displayed at the Boston Early Music Festival and is now in Canada. Another replica, of a larger 1755 organ by the Pistoian builder Tronci, was later built for a museum in Gifu, Japan. In 1984 he restored the 1745 Tronci organ in the church of San Filippo in Pistoia, for which he was made an honorary citizen of the city. One of the Italian-style organs that Tsuji had built he kept in his workshop, and at his suggestion the town of Shirakawa has for the past 20 years sponsored an annual Academy of Italian Organ Music there, which has brought several distinguished teachers to Japan. One of the results of this collaboration is that Shirakawa and Pistoia have become “sister cities,” participating in cultural exchange.
While several subsequent organs continued to reflect the North German style, by the late 1980s and early 1990s Tsuji was building some larger organs based on 18th-century Italian principles, culminating in his last instrument for the Community Hall in his home town of Shirakawa, completed in 2005. In this period too he spent some time in Spain, where he restored the historic Renaissance organ in Salamanca Cathedral, a large one-manual instrument. In 1994 he built a sizable organ in the Spanish style for Salamanca Hall in Gifu, the third manual of which is tonally a replica of the Salamanca Cathedral organ. However, most subsequent Tsuji organs were in either the German or the Italian style. Because most Christian churches in Japan are quite small, many of the organs built for them by Tsuji were likewise small, some with only three or four stops and either a coupled pedal or no pedal at all. Some of his larger church organs included those in the Tokyo Lutheran Center (II/15, 1972), St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Tokyo (II/22, 1976), the chapel of the Salesian Boys Home (II/16, 1989), and the Protestant Church in Kobe (II/24, 2001). Most of Tsuji’s larger organs were built for schools and concert halls. These included the Tamagawa School (II/18, 1978), Nagoya Gakuin University (II/14, 1984), Seinann Gakuin University (III/33, 1987), Salamanca Hall, Gifu (III/45, 1994/9), Aoyama Gakuin, Shibuya (II/14, 1994), and Community Hall, Shirakawa (II/21, 2005). Tsuji also made a number of small residence and practice organs, contributing to a total number of 81 organs built between 1964 and 2005. The workmanship of Tsuji’s instruments, regardless of size, was impeccable, the sound refined and balanced, and the casework well-proportioned and of handsome classical design. It is to be regretted that the only examples of his work to be exported to the American continent are a small house organ and a 3-stop continuo organ, both in Canada. —Barbara Owen
Grady W. Wilson, a longtime resident of Columbus, Ohio, formerly of New York City, died January 15 at Dublin Retirement Village. He was 75. Born July 16, 1930, Wilson received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama, Master of Music from Florida State University, and Doctor of Musical Arts in organ from the University of Michigan. Dr. Wilson retired as professor of music at the State College of Jersey City (now Jersey City University) in 1993. He most recently served as organist at Trinity United Methodist Church in Marble Cliff, having previously served churches in New York and New Jersey. Wilson performed as a pianist and organist, both as soloist and with his identical twin brother, the late Dr. Gordon Wilson. The Wilson brothers toured the United States and Europe performing original duets for organ (two performers at one console), releasing a recording of these works in 1977. A memorial service was held February 2 at Trinity United Methodist Church, Columbus, Ohio.
