The "Brief Aadland Story"
Art Aadland and Ellen Lovseth, (two preachers’ kids, with a love for traditional church music), got to know each other while attending Augustana College and singing together in the Our Savior’s Lutheran Church adult choir. Art and Ellen were engaged to be married in the summer of 1971 between their junior and senior years at Augustana only two months into Art’s first pipe organ restoration contract.
Ellen, who loved choral music and had been a church organist from age 14, joined forces with Art (who had the same love for choral worship) in restoring tracker action pipe organs. During the early years of doing business as Aadland Pipe Organ Co., Art and Ellen observed what types of improvements could be made to prevent long term deterioration of wood elements, glue joints and fastener attachments within these instruments. This led to the long term development of Climate resistive features in traditional designs of pipe organs which would graphically improve tuning stability, reduce maintenance costs and prevent long term intra-joint shifting within the structures of pipe organs.
In addition to the development of climate resistive engineering and temperature differential control, Art and Ellen have designed their instruments with service access efficiency engineering to improve internal access. This prevents trauma to organ pipes and delicate mechanisms by making wind chests and organ consoles accessible without the removal of delicate surrounding components.
After only 14 years of improving quality and design structures within their pipe organs, Art and Ellen’s new instruments had developed a track record of substantially reduced maintenance requirements, due mainly to the application of high stability features within pertinent component structures. After 32 years of refined stability development of their organ designs, Art and Ellen have reduced yearly maintenance requirements to less than half that of the average instrument.
The criteria for improved stability has been focused around eliminating variant expansion and contraction within sensitive portions of each instrument, while conserving the durability advantages of traditional hardwood structures.
Quality of the Aadland pipe organ |
was founded in Sioux Falls, SD in 1971 by Art Aadland and Established in Valley Springs, SD in 1972 by Art and Ellen Aadland