Ira Allen Chapel, University of Vermont - Burlington

Vermont, USA

University of Vermont Organist David Neiweem at the console of the Ira Allen Chapel organ. For many years, organ music was uncharacteristically absent from the University of Vermont's center stage. Ira Allen Chapel – one of the state’s premier organ venues, with acoustics specially designed for its robust tones – had been without an instrument since 1985, when designer had to place an airshaft where the instrument’s pipes once held forth due to a renovation of the building, part of the conversion of the Billings Library to a student center.University Organist David Neiweem knew that a new pipe organ and renovations to the chapel would be too costly and found that the Rodgers Trillium organ would more than meet their needs, at a fraction of the cost. A new Trillium 927 three-manual organ was installed in 2004 with careful installation guidance from Marshall Ogletree Associates, the New England Rodgers representative.Neiweem aims to bond a new generation of students and the community at large to the "King of Instruments" by making organ music widely accessible at UVM, as much a part of the university’s fabric as it was in the early 1800s.