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Block 2 Lot 15 Molave Street, Admiral Village, Talon, Las Piñas City, PHILIPPINES 1747
(
(+63 2) 8012412
e-
organbuilder @diegocera.com
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HISTORY |
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It
is without doubt that the restoration of the Bamboo Organ (1973-75)
generated a revival of interest for the pipe-organs in the country, built
during the Spanish Colonial Period. The yearly organized International
Bamboo Organ Festival was an opportunity to establish contacts with
organists and organizations who wanted to support the training of Filipino
organists as well as organbuilders in order to secure the future of
the Bamboo Organ, so that in the future there would be no need anymore to
transport the entire instrument abroad, as had happened in 1972.
With
the help of Dr. Johann Trummer, then head of the Institute for Church
Music at the University of Graz (Austria) , some young Filipino students
from Las Piñas, mostly selected from among the members of the Las Piñas Boys
Choir (under the direction of Fr. Leo Renier, CICM), were provided
with a scholarship to take up a course in church music and organbuilding....
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 Diego Cera Organbuilders
was founded by Organ-builders
Cealwyn S. Tagle and the late Edgar M. Montiano (1969-2002) in
1994 after returning from years of apprenticeship and training in Europe.
T hey
started as apprentices in 1988 with Master Organ-builder Helmut Allgaeuer
in Gruenbach, Austria and later trained at the world-renowned
workshop of Johannes Klais Orgelbau in Bonn, Germany. They
learned every aspect of the craft (design, woodwork, pipe making, tuning,
voicing, proper restoration, etc.) intensively under the supervision of
Master Organ-builders. They also participated in several workshops handled
by the International Society of Organbuilders (ISO) and the
European Center for Conservation, Restoration, and Renovation (ECCRR) in
Alden Biesen, Belgium.
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To ensure the company’s growth and quality of work, Diego Cera
Organbuilders, Inc. has set up a four-year apprenticeship program in Organ
Building. Presently, the company employs four trained organ-builders, one of
which is Mr. Christopher Guevarra who underwent further training at
the organ-building shop of Maestro Federico Acitores of Torquemada,
Spain in 2002.
 In
this part of the world of low labor cost, the Diego Cera Organbuilders can
still afford to spend a lot of time working on the details of an instrument.
The precision work a pipe organ needs is very labor intensive.
Since its founding in 1994, the company has built more than a dozen new
tracker organs and restored seven
historic pipe organs including the Bamboo Organ of Las Pinas and the 70-stop
pipe organ at the Cathedral of Manila.
They also have exported Pipe Organs to USA, Germany, Austria, Lithuania
and Belarus.
To
make Pipe Organ Music more accessible to the Filipino people, the
company has recently associated itself with
Harvey Smoller Organ
Services and with
Johannus Organs, the top maker of Digital
Pipe Organs in the world. And along this line, the company aims to make
Pipe Organs more affordable for churches and individuals to acquire with
the introduction of digital technology in construction and development
of its instruments.
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