Wayne T. Warren has been involved in pipe organ tuning, maintenance, moving, restorations and rebuilding since 1974. He worked with M.P. Möller installation and service representative Phillip A. Robertson of Whitmore Lake, Michigan, and then assisted several other organ builders in Michigan before founding his own pipe organ service company in 1985. Wayne was responsible for overseeing the tunings and emergency repairs for most of the pipe organs heard during the 1995 Organ Historical Society’s National Convention in Detroit. He continues to operate his organ company in Apollo Beach, Florida, providing services, which include consultations, moving, restoring and relocating pipe and reed organs, as well as new or used digital instruments.
He is a member of the Organ Historical Society and was founder of the Florida Chapter of that organization, as well as a founding member of the Michigan Chapter of the OHS. He started the Michigan OHS chapter’s newsletter, THE IMPOST and also began the Florida OHS Chapter’s newsletter, THE RACKBOARD. From 2001 through 2004, Wayne wrote the ORGAN UPDATE column in THE TRACKER, published by the OHS.
A former Benedictine monk of St. Leo Abbey in Florida, Wayne has been a church organist since the age of 14, beginning at Divine Heart Seminary, Donaldson, IN. and was organist and choirmaster at Detroit’s Ste. Anne Catholic Church for over 17 years before moving to Florida in 1995. He studied organ with Helen Fairchild Larsson of Detroit and currently serves as organist and choirmaster at St. Anne Catholic Church in Ruskin, Florida. There, he has instituted the St. Anne Baroque Recorder Consort, the new children’s choir, Les Petits Chanteurs de Ste. Anne and a mixed quartet while rebuilding the parish’s liturgical choir. Mr. Warren is also organist at Calvary Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Apollo Beach, Florida.
St. Anne Church in Ruskin presently houses an historic pipe organ on the property: a 4 rank, 1899 Charles Gill organ from Wales in the parish hall. Wayne restored the organ in 1997. A 1906 Estey Style H-97 reed organ also resides in the church and provides music for soloists and quieter moments during the services. A 1977 Howard/Hubbard/Lyon two-manual French double harpsichord arrived at the church in April 2005 followed by a Neupert pedal harpsichord in July.
Wayne has worked closely with the Organ Clearing House in the southeastern United States since 1997, an organization that relocates pipe organs. A member of the Tampa Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, Wayne presently holds the office of Sub Dean in that organization and has been responsible for organizing the chapter’s annual Bach Bash for several years. He is also a member of The Hymn Society and The Royal School of Church Music.
He has been a member of the Reed Organ Society since 2000 and owns 8 reed organs, which date from 1872 to 1970. Wayne was one of the featured recitalists at St. John Episcopal Church in Tuscumbia, AL for the Society’s Great Southern Organ Crawl in March of 2003 and the 2004 Reed Organ Festival in Fayette, Ohio. Mr. Warren assumed the office of President of the ROS in May 2004.
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