NEW CHURCH ORGAN LURES MIDWEST MUSICIAN TO S.D.

Organ-arily there’s not much to pipe about the king of instruments in San Diego County. Now there may be cause for chatter at least, if not long-winded discussions. Our ears pricked up when organist Robert Thompson gave up a comfortable college post he had held for 16 years to come to San Diego.

Why would an accomplished musician (and choirmaster) who has concertized regularly throughout the organ country of the great Upper Midwest relinquish his teaching and performing duties at St. Olaf College in Minnesota to work at a San Diego church that doesn’t even have a working organ?

Thompson came to San Diego partly because he was tired of Minnesota winters. Another reason is the new/ancient instrument that will be installed at All Souls’ Episcopal Church in Point Loma next month. Thompson knew about the builders, Fritts-Richards from Tacoma, Wash., a relatively young company.

“They have a tremendous reputation for high-quality work,” he said. “This is not your average American organ you can buy at the local store and plug in.”

Indeed not. The All Souls’ congregation is more than a little excited about getting a modern version of a 17th-Century Northern German-style tracker organ. The church has waited for almost nine years and raised more than $250,000 for the free-standing instrument. Why so much money for a church organ? “It represents the very highest and most recent development in organ building in this country. And it’s built in America,” Thompson said.

So when will it be heard? Once the organ arrives from Washington--in parts--it must be reassembled and “voiced” in the church. But more on that next month. There’s plenty of time. For an instrument that takes years to build, the voicing will require an additional three months.

STARLIGHTERS: Starlight has completed Phase I of its renovation of the Starlight Bowl with new restrooms and a new facade and concession stand. Phase II, a new stage house with expanded and improved dressing room and rehearsal space, will cost about $2 million, and construction will begin in the fall of ’86.

Halfway through its season, Starlight reports that gross revenues are above last season’s figures. One reason is that ticket prices are up. Attendance was down by about 200 for “George M!” compared with the first play of 1984. But revenues went ahead by $30,000, according to Executive Director Leon Drew.

There was no problem with “The King and I,” which generated $22,000 more than “My Fair Lady” did the previous year. “Where’s Charley?” nose-dived, however. “People simply don’t know the show,” Drew said. Advance sales for “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” are running ahead of last year, and there’s a fifth production this year, “A Chorus Line,” not the usual family fare one sees at Starlight. “We have advised people that some may object to parts of ‘Chorus Line.’ I hope that they should pay attention to that. But by the same token, Starlight has to stretch itself and appeal to a broader audience, too.”

MOPA MONEY: Elaine Galinson, who was deputy staff director for Joan Mondale in the Mondale-Ferraro 1984 presidential campaign, has been selected as director of development for the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. Galinson, who was also San Diego County campaign director and later finance director for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s unsuccessful 1982 gubernatorial run, will direct MOPA’s fund-raising activities, including direct solicitation, grant proposals and membership drives.

Galinson is well-connected in San Diego fund-raising circles, having co-chaired the 1983 capital fund drive for the North City Jewish Community Center with her husband Murray and Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.). She’s a director of the City Club of San Diego and a member of the Old Globe Theatre, the San Diego Museum of Art, the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, the San Diego Symphony and the Chancellor’s Associates of UC San Diego.

Galinson joins a staff of eight in a museum that in less than three years has set some remarkable standards, zooming from zero to 200,000 annual visitors and developing 2,000 members. In an industry in which the ratio of contributed income to earned income is more normally 30 to 70, MOPA generates an astonishing 70% of its budget through earned income. It’s Galinson’s job to boost the percentage of contributed income.

ARTBEATS: More of the city’s smaller theaters are beating the summer heat by installing air conditioning. The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre is the latest, joining the Bowery, which installed cold air earlier this year, and the Lamb’s Players Theatre, a 200-seat theater that has had air-conditioning for years. . . . Mitchell Lathrop, a senior partner of the Rogers & Wells law firm and currently vice chairman of the executive committee of the Metropolitan Opera National Council in New York, has been named a member of the San Diego Opera board of directors . . . The final KSDS-FM (88.3) Jazz Alive broadcast concert on Aug. 27 will feature the Jimmy Corsaro Trio instead of the Bill Fender Quartet. Staged in the City College Theatre at 14th and C streets, the concert begins at 8 p.m. . . . The Center for World Music concludes its Intercon 1985 series Aug. 18 at 3 p.m. in the Spanish Village in Balboa Park. INCA, an ensemble of five South American musicians, will play music of the Andes . . . The much-put-off Alan Ayckbourn comedy, “Round and Round the Garden,” taken from “The Norman Conquests” trilogy, will open “for sure” Aug. 22.