When sophomore Nolan Reilly tells people his major is organ performance, he usually gets funny looks.

“It’s not a very well known instrument,” Reilly observed. “People don’t even realize [organ performance] is a major.”

Despite these abnormal reactions, Reilly hasn’t stopped his pursuit to master the “king of instruments,” a dream he has had since he was 3 or 4 years old.

“I had an insane fascination with buttons and switches, and of course, organs are completely covered in them,” he said. “It’s been sort of a lifelong dream.”

Of course, dreams change — in this case, Reilly’s desire to push buttons became his desire to create an orchestra with those buttons at his fingertips.

“The great thing about the organ is you can evoke any sort of feeling you desire,” he said.

After looking at different organ departments across the Midwest, Reilly, an Oklahoma City native, said he heard great things about OU’s program from a high school teacher.

“I had a lot of fun when I came down for my audition and ended up staying,” he said. “It’s a lot of students that really love playing organ.”

Tara Partington said she transferred to OU from Oklahoma City University this year because she found a better fit with the OU School of Music’s organ program after her former professor took a job at another school.

Partington also works in OU’s American Organ Institute shop. OU is the only university with an organ restoration shop since the school acquired it in 2005. While the majority of student workers in the shop are organ students, there are also students from majors like science, math and criminal studies.

Partington, an organ performance junior, said she found the program much more open than most other studios from her experience.

“We have such a wide range of students, and we are just exposed to so much,” she said. “There’s no catty [behavior], there’s no cutting remarks — everything has to be positive. It’s family. It’s total family here.”

Most organ students like Partington work to restore and repair pipe organs as a way to learn more about their art. Restoration can take one to three years depending on the organ and how much repair is needed.

Second-year organ graduate student Rachel Foster, who started working in the shop just a week after she moved to Norman last year from Minnesota, said organs always require maintenance.

“[Organs] get problems more frequently than cars do,” Foster said.

Foster said most organists don’t learn organ repair because it is simply too time-consuming.

“Most parish organists end up just playing malfunctioning organs almost all the time because they can’t afford to have an organ maintenance person come out,” she explained. “But if you can [repair an organ] yourself, you can play an instrument that’s a lot nicer.”

Students understanding the different facets of the pipe organ by teaching restoration processes — such as re-leathering, pipe cleaning and voicing — has been a priority of the program since the repair shop opened for work.

“[Students are involved] in every facet; a wide skill set is required in organ-building,” said pipe organ associate professor John Schwandt, who is also the AOI director and helps run the shop. “The more well versed they are in every aspect of [the pipe organ], the more broad their perspective.”

Schwandt said he believes the pipe organ’s universal appeal as the “king of instruments” is because of its grandeur, particularly in the church.

“I think there’s something visceral that people respond to,” he said. “So I think it strikes a chord in people at a fundamental level.”