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Walt Strony

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Walt Strony

Walt Strony (born 1955) is an American recording, consulting and performing organist and organ teacher, both on the theatre organ and traditional pipe organ, ranging from pizza parlors to churches and theatres to symphony orchestras.

Strony’s classical organ studies were with Herbert L. White of the Sherwood Conservatory of Music Columbia College Chicago and Karel Paukert at Northwestern University. His theatre organ teacher was Al Melgard, famous as the Staff Organist on the Barton organ at the Chicago Stadium. When Melgard retired in 1975 he gave Strony his Oak Park, IL teaching studio. Strony later studied piano with Giulio Favrio of the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

He made his public debut as an organist in 1974, aged 18. During his college years he began playing the theatre organ in pizza parlors, a fad in the 1970s which gave new life to a largely forgotten instrument. For many years thereafter he was Artist-in-Residence at First Christian Church in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Strony has studied with silent-film accompanists and has accompanied silent films for years, such as The Phantom of the Opera (1925 film) and Nosferatu at the Plaza Theatre (El Paso).

He has performed in the United States, toured extensively in Australia (1978), England (1989), Japan (Expo ‘75 & 2011), and Canada (1999), and he is a regular performer at conventions of the American Theatre Organ Society. In 2012 he played his 39th ATOS convention, more than any other organist. He played there again in 2008. He has also performed for the American Guild of Organists on both local and national levels.

He has performed on numerous classical instruments as well, most notably having been featured in June 2009 at Macy's in Philadelphia (formerly Wanamaker’s) playing the largest operating pipe organ in the world. He has also recorded on the world’s largest theatre organ at the Sanfillipo Music Room in Barrington, IL.

In addition to solo concerts, he has performed with several symphony orchestras. In El Paso he played music including Symphony No. 3 (Organ) of Camille Saint-Saëns. He played at the Calgary International Organ Festival with the Calgary Philharmonic. Additionally, he has performed with the Allentown Symphony and Symphony Silicon Valley. While in college he performed the Poulenc Organ Concerto with the Chicago Businessman’s Orchestra.

In 1991 and 1993 the American Theatre Organ Society selected him as "Organist of the Year." He is the only living organist to have received this award twice. In 2011 he was inducted into the American Theatre Organ Society Hall of Fame.

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