The Irish-born organ-builderKenneth Jones, whose work is found inevery continent except Antarctica, iseasing into semi-retirement, handingover control of his busy company(Kenneth Jones & Associates).This is agood opportunity to look back over hislong career, so I recently visited him athis beautiful home (self-designed andpartly self-built, of course!) in theinspiringWicklow hills.

‘Something old, something new’has been an idée fixe throughout hiscareer, so I thought that this columnwould be an appropriate place tosurvey his output.The front covers ofOrganists’ Review have displayed over theyears numerous examples of his strikingorgan-cases; to our readers his workwill be familiar.

As much a musician, philosopher,student of architecture and originalthinker as an organ-builder, Kennethenthuses about the early influenceswhich drew him to organ-building,while musing that it may be anappropriate time to retire because organdesign has ‘perhaps reached the end of acul-de-sac’.An unexpected statement,one might feel, from a man who hasbeen more richly inventive in case-design, layout and mechanism designthan any of his generation. ‘There’snothing new’ he opines ‘someone,somewhere has done it all before’.Themodesty of this statement is genuineand it evidences the true philosopher –someone who continually seeks for thetruths he knows to be out there. Hefeels that given the current decline inchurch-going the only likely productivefuture fields for the imaginative organ-builder are ‘in historical restorations(and new historical copy organs)’ and‘new organs for concert halls, such asthose springing up in the Far East’.

Born in 1936 to a Church ofIreland Rector, Kenneth heard theorgan from an early age and was taughtit by his mother, a skilled trainedplayer. EarlyTelford organs, with theirlow cut-ups and musical, singing tonedelighted him – as they do still,remaining one of the guiding principlesof his tonal philosophy.At the sametime, the brilliant virility of the 1878T.C. Lewis organ in Christ Church,Cork, excited and inspired him. It wasnot just the organs themselves whichprovided the spur; it was musicianssuch as the remarkable CalvertSwanton, a skilled amateur andfrequent visitor to Paris whochampioned the works of Dupré,Vierne, Langlais and Messiaen inIreland, performing them regularly onthe 1901 Abbott & Smith at DunLaoghaire and bringing to Irelandplayers such as Langlais, Demessieux

and Dupré.The musical environment inwhich Kenneth found himself allowedhim to develop broader interests thanpurely the organ – piano, harpsichord,singing, chamber music: he wasinvolved in them all.

Boarding-school educated, Kennethproved an able mathematician so he readfor Engineering (and Arts) degrees atTrinity College, Dublin, deciding tokeep music as a hobby rather than acareer. On graduation he thought – asever – ‘out of the box’, and accepted anengineering post on the rail system inNigeria. Bereft of organs to hear or play,he took to the radio and tuned in oneday to the English Language Service ofSwedish Radio.There he was bowledover by the sound of a Marcussen organbeing broadcast and began to seek outrecordings of such organs, andrecordings of the great historicalinstruments which inspired them – suchas HelmutWalcha’s Bach at Alkmaar. Heearned nearly five months leave fromthe tropics every couple of years or so;much of this time he spent in theNetherlands with the organ-buildersPels &Van Leeuwen, whose work hehad come across in Ireland.With themhe was to learn many skills such as pipe-making and tonal finishing.With them,too, he visited and studied several of theiconic Dutch instruments, even helpingto tune at the Bavokerk in Haarlem,which he still regards as ‘the mostbeautiful organ in the world’.

Deciding the time was right toleave the railways and start up as anorgan-builder, he took a ‘goldenhandshake’ in 1964, assembled a smallteam of trainees around him and did justthat. Over the next eight years he builttwenty-five new organs (most of themmodest electric-action instruments) inNigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone.Two

The organs of Kenneth JonesPaul Hale

22 Organists’ Review November 2007

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Paul Hale

tracker organs were designed and built,and with them under his belt he decidedto move back to Ireland and set up shopin his homeland.

Once again he assembled a team oftrainees: this has always been a Jonescharacteristic, as he has endeavouredfor the whole of his career to seek outlatent talent and train the nextgeneration of organ craftsmen. For a

while in the early 1970s a directorshipof Nicholsons (the otherdirectors/owners were DenisThurlowand RaymondTodd) proved mutuallybeneficial to both firms, but very soonKenneth Jones & Associates built up anenviable order book, mainly for neworgans, in Ireland and abroad. He wasset fair.

Kenneth’s involvement in music

had flourished in Nigeria, as conductorof Pro Musica Lagos, an orchestrawhich he founded, and this continuedin Ireland where he was appointedPrincipal Conductor of the DublinOrchestral Players, Ireland’s leadingsemi-professional symphony orchestra.Music has continued to be anunderpinning of his craft to this day;recently he conducted the ChinaYouth

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Organists’ Review November 2007 23

National Concert Hall, Dublin Trinity College, Melbourne,Australia Parish Church, Eskra, Co.Tyrone

St Mark,Anchorage,Alaska Mount St Mary’s, Spinkhill,Yorks Fukuyama, Japan

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SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Orchestra at the inauguration of hisnew concert-organ in BeijingYouthConcert Hall.

His output of new organs has beenremarkable – outstripping in number oforgans all other companies in the UKand Ireland. Between 1973 and 2006 heand his company built six four-manualorgans, fifteen three-manual organs,forty-three two-manual organs, twenty

one-manual organs and a number ofhouse organs. Every one of these isunique and was designed personally –internally, technically and musically aswell as architecturally – by KennethJones (just a few of his extraordinarilyvaried organ-cases are illustrated here).In addition there were twentyrestorations (mainly ‘historic’) andnineteen rebuildings. Much of his mostinteresting work has been abroad –across the USA (several in Alaska),China, Greece,Australia, Japan,Canada, Falklands (Christ ChurchCathedral) and so on. In addition towork in the UK, many of his organshave naturally been for Irish clients.

What are the characteristics of aKenneth Jones organ?Well, the firstthing that is abundantly clear is that allhas been thought out from scratch:Jones has never been content to makesomething in a particular way justbecause others do.This applies to everyaspect of his organs – from pedalboardto tuning-slide, from key-action topipe-scaling, from soundboard to toe-piston: all have been reconsidered fromscratch, tried and tested, and then usedregularly in his organs. His consoledesign is ergonomically thought-through, as is the shape of his uniquepedalboard which successfully combinesthe best characteristics of straight and

radiating/concave boards. His tonaldesigns combine – even after all thistime – the sweet singing Principalchoruses of his youth with the vivaciousmixture-work of his ‘Marcussen-influenced’ years. Stop-lists often have aloosely English look, though fullyspecified with mutations and a richpalette of reeds, and he has gonethrough periods where particular

Christ Church Cathedral,Vancouver, Canada Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City Holy Cross, Dundrum, Dublin

Youth Concert Hall, Beijing, China Glenstal Abbey, Co. Limerick

Organists’ Review November 2007 25

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

enthusiasms are evident. One of thesewas a reconsideration of the concept ofa ‘Résonance’ department acting bothas a Solo Organ and as the Pedalupperwork; examples of this datingfrom the early 1990s may be found insuch otherwise wildly dissimilar organsas those in the National Concert Hall(Dublin) and the University Church(Cambridge). His actions are respectedfor their elegant, light, responsivetouch, aided in his largest organs by avariety of clever ‘assists’ (pneumatic orelectric, usually involving secondarypallets) for the couplers – some ofwhich he has revisited in later years toimprove. Stop action is usuallymechanical, often with electricsolenoids in parallel to enable acombination action. Other firms haveattempted this; few succeed. His recentbeautiful organ (a recreation anddevelopment of a rare organ byThomas

Elliot, 1817) inWaterford Cathedralsucceeds triumphantly in its stop action– each stop having a sensor to ensureits on/off current is supplied just longenough to draw/withdraw it silently,however broad the slide.

Jones’s organ-cases are striking:each of his imaginative case-designs isquite different (no ‘samey’ standard re-used CAD work here); readers over theyears will have come to appreciate theenormous range he has shown, fromhistorically-inspired to a variety of‘contemporary’ styles. He has also beenknown, like several famous organ-builders of the past, for managing to layout an organ internally getting in morethan most would have consideredpossible, yet leaving all accessible. Greatchallenges in design and layout include,of course, the historic organ atTewkesbury Abbey, perhaps aninstrument by which he will be best

remembered in the UK, for many of hisother British organs are in university orschool chapels and are therefore ratherless in the public eye: Rugby School (forwhich he received the Jeu d’Esprit awardof the Royal Fine Art CommissionTrustin 2002), Loretto School, EmmanuelCollege, Cambridge, and Mount StMary’s College (near Sheffield) areamong the latter.

A book would be needed – isneeded – adequately to do justice tothe lifetime achievements of KennethJones.All this article has space for is amodest résumé of his career and asmall selection of photographs of hisremarkable output. In the next issue,we will print more photographs and Iwill carry on assessing Jones’s work bylooking in detail at a number of hisorgans and in discussing with him hisviews on various aspects of tonal andmechanical design.