The tracker (mechanical) organ in the James R. Cox Auditorium was made possible by the bequest of James R. Cox, whose estate contributed $750,000 to the more than $1.5 million instrument (the remainder was allocated by UT). The organ honors Cox’s nephew, James Musgraves. Richards, Fowkes & Company of Ooltewah, Tennessee, built the instrument. Bruce Fowkes, Andrew Wishart, and Dean Wilson were the builders of the 2,766 pipe organ (41 sets of pipes, or stops), each pipe of which was made by hand from a mixture of 98 percent lead; 1 percent tin; and 1 percent combination of copper, bismuth, and antimony. The organ is built upon the lines of the classic northern European instruments, although it makes concessions to the twenty-first century as well.
The organ has an onboard computer that the organist can use to recall the combination of stops (a stop controls a rank of pipes) that has been played. The keyboard, the heart of the organ, is contained in a case more than 20 feet high and nearly as wide, with ranks of 16-foot high pipes in towers on either side of it. The bellows are also electric.
The organ was installed in 2006 and 2007, with the dedicatory concert played by John Brock, UT organ professor, on January 21, 2007. Chancellor Emeritus William Snyder, the driving force behind acquisition of a pipe organ for UT, served as guest organist with the UT Symphony Orchestra on February 17 as it played Saint-Saens’ Symphony No. 3 “Organ” Symphony in conjunction with the American Guild of Organists National Conference on Organ Pedagogy. The pipe organ in Alumni Memorial Building is the second organ installed in the building.