INDIANAPOLIS — Justin Stahl remembers visiting the Paramount Music Palace while he was still in middle school.
“I was just enamored by the sound,” Stahl said. “The organ was on a lift, and it comes up out of the floor, and there's lights, percussion, drums, cymbals, and pipes. I'm like, ‘I'm going to play something like that someday.’”
Stahl would never have the opportunity to play at the Paramount Music Palace. The venue closed in 1995. But the organ that struck a chord all those years ago still speaks to Stahl's heart today. The “Mighty Wurlitzer.”
“Somebody basically hijacked a pipe organ and attached all of these different cymbals, drums, bells, whistles, sound effects, all these sorts of things,” Stahl said. “[With] a push of a button, I can be a marching band, I can be a jazz combo, I can be a rock band. It's all a one-man band.”
Decades later, Stahl’s fascination with the Mighty Wurlitzer hasn’t changed its tune. Stahl will be headlining “Remember the Paramount: The Next Generation” on October 20 at the Hilbert Circle Theatre.
“We're at that next generation where I'm able to perform for people and get them into this just the way that I was,” Stahl said. “It’s very, very humbling.”
The organ concert fundraiser will also feature the Pike High School Jazz Ensemble. Organist and former WRTV sports reporter Ken Double will serve as master of ceremonies. Patrons will also be treated to a showing of the silent film “Two Tars.”
“I'm going to play a silent movie so you'll see it in its real and original intent,” Stahl said.
The show is a presentation of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Association and the Central Indiana Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society. Click here for more information.
