Ian Tracey Appointed as Tonal Director

Following the recent retirement of Ernest Hart, after some fifty years service as Managing Director and latterly as Tonal Director at Copeman Hart and Company Ltd, Professor Ian Tracey, Organist Titulaire at Liverpool Cathedral, has been appointed Tonal Director at both Copeman Hart and Makin Organs Ltd.
 
Ian has been a Tonal Consultant at Makin since 2011; his vast knowledge of pipe organs, organ voicing and organ music has helped the company develop dramatically and firmed up its position as the market leading digital organ manufacturer in the UK. Managing Director of both companies, Dr Keith Harrington commented “It has been a tremendous privilege to work with Ian for the last few years. In particular when it comes to organ voicing we now provide instruments which are simply unrivalled. Our relationship and approach is unique within the digital organ world with customers seeing tremendous benefits. Keith added “As Tonal Director of both companies an even larger number of clients will benefit from his skills and knowledge. Customers often comment that they are surprised that Ian is so approachable with many of them asking him to ‘open’ new installations.”

Ian Tracey commented that “The past two years of collaboration with Keith and Richard on these new instruments has been amongst my most satisfying and rewarding work. Shaping and moulding the various sounds into a coherent, artistically and musically satisfying whole in the buildings in which they speak has been so exciting and musically enriching. To sift through the thousands of first class samples and be able to mould the acid strings and big harmonic flutes of Cavaille-Coll with the mutations and small scale flutework of Arp Schnitger and the very ‘best of British’ diapasons and reeds is as exciting as being a small boy in a sweetshop with an open cheque!”

A fuller account of these exciting developments will be published in the next edition of ‘Organ News.’