A FIRE ORGAN is a made up name and a made up musical instrument! But it is also a sound instrument first described in 1875 by the thoughtful French physicist George Kastner. He called a "pyrophone" a set of tubes that produce sound when heat is applied to them. If high heat is applied to the open bottom of a round metal pipe that has a sort of obstacle placed high up in it, as the heat rises it pulls down cooler air from above; as the column of air inside the pipe vibrates against the barrier inside it the hot air and the cold airpass each other and sound is created. The diameter and the length of the pipe control what note the vibration will produce and other factors affect the sound of it.

Currently, there are very few pyrophones in the world; the leading creator of such inventions is a Frenchman, Michel Moglia, who came to Vermont to make a fire organ for our film. Our production designer, sculptor Antoinette Jacobson, worked with Michel and assisted him in creating a fire organ specific to the character of Sonny Gale, a reclusive artist who has an obsession with fire.

Although Michel normally creates huge sculptural installations of stainless steel, titanium and glass, the fire organ he and Antoinette designed for Sonny is made of salvaged pipes and scrap metal. Not particularly mobile, because of its size (although we did set it up on the State House lawn in Montpelier for 1st Night), it currently sits on a beautiful hilltop in Vermont overlooking the Connecticut River Valley, and attracts the interest of hikers and picnickers.

Since completing production on the film, Antoinette has built several portable fire organs that are mounted on a cart so they can be transported to screening venues. Michel calls them orgues de poche -- pocket organs! We have brought them to various film festivals and played them before and after screenings of the film. They are a great way to attract a crowd!

A fire organ can be tuned to scales like a proper pipe organ; But Michel’s view is that a fire organist should improvise and play with the fire, not “master” it, as one would “master” the harpsichord. Sonny would not have tuned his fire organ either: his sounds are wild, as are the sounds from our orgues de poche!

OFF THE GRID PRODUCTIONS