Nathan Barr bought and restored the 1928 Wurlitzer theater organ from Fox studios, and constructed a purpose-built studio around it which he named Bandrika Studios. It hails from the days of silent films when live organists would accompany the film, and it has a formidable history of recording after the advent of sound. The organ is the central heart of Bandrika, and it consumes 6 rooms of it. There is the live room and then rooms for the blower, air routing and tremolo, percussion and pipes, more pipes, and one more which I can’t quite recall.

The studio and the organ are only recently finished, and the first film score he was able to score using the organ was the spooky kids film I helped to orchestrate called A House With A Clock In Its Walls. The Wurlitzer had been boxed up for 25 years and used only sparsely for many years before that, so it was really fun for us to hear it come back to life and begin to fulfill its purpose again. They were the first recording sessions at the fully functional Bandrika.

This is a little behind the scenes video about the organ and that score, shot on one of our recording session days.