Sending the class of 2026 out on the right note

Academic technologist Steve Panizza is often found in the classroom showing students and faculty how to use equipment properly. But when the College of Pharmacy class of 2026 walks across the stage at commencement this month, he’ll be found on that same stage, behind the keys of one of the largest and only remaining concert hall pipe organs in the country.  

With nearly 7,000 pipes, four keyboards, and around 225 pedals and buttons, Northrop’s Aeolian-Skinner Opus 892 organ is a giant vestige of the late Romantic Era and no picnic to play. But in addition to his degree in mechanical engineering, Panizza is a classically-trained pianist, an organ builder, and one of the handful of people allowed to play the instrument. Panizza was first invited to play the Northrop organ in 2018 by a professor in the music school who knew of his playing experience and knowledge of organ building. Following Northrop’s renovation, the organ had been painstakingly reinstalled and needed to be “broken in,” Panizza explained. A few years later, he was asked to play at a commencement ceremony for the first time. This will be the third graduation Panniza has played, but this year’s is particularly special to him because of his connection with the class of 2026. He said it means “everything” to him to be a part of the students’ ceremony in this way. For this year, he composed a trumpet voluntary that will open the ceremony, a recessional that will close it and an intermezzo that bridges it together. 

“This class kind of adopted me and when they asked me if I'd play organ for their graduation, I just said yes… It's going to be a great send off to a class that kind of got to be a family,” Panizza said. “It'll be sad to see this group go… In January when I practiced the recessional, I took my hands off the last key and I thought to myself, ‘this is the last time I’ll see these people again.’”

For Panizza, organ building is the place where his worlds of engineering and music intersect. He grew up a musician, touching a piano for the first time as young as four years old. Though his parents intended it to be his older sister who took lessons, she had no interest and paid Panizza in nickels and dimes to practice for her. As a senior in high school, he attended a high school tour day of Carthage College merely out of an interest in seeing their pipe organ— he unknowingly auditioned by playing a memorized Chopin waltz and was offered a scholarship. Panizza had already committed to engineering school, but he stayed involved with Carthage’s music program. 

“My organ building came out of that— engineering plus this love of the instrument,” he said. “I used to really separate those lives— what I did at Northrop was very different from what I did at [the college] and I'd keep those lives very separate.”

Now, he finds himself letting those lives cross more often. Walking through the engineering building one day on the Twin Cities campus, for example, he noticed a sign for the course “Design for a Disrupted World.” He applied the same concept to pipe organs, which he said are increasingly considered financially unsustainable and even a dying instrument. He decided to design a new, minimalist organ that would cost less, use recycled pipework from discarded instruments, require less maintenance, and serve as a chamber instrument that complements other instruments. Playing the Northrop organ was always recreational for Panizza, but for graduations, he has a much more serious outlook. Since Northrop is often booked, he practices as much as possible at home, but it’s impossible to replicate the Northrop organ, so he uses his sessions with it to better understand the instrument and identify any weak spots in his playing. 

“I don't think people understand how much time gets put in to do this,” he said. “The last couple of years, I haven't really had a lot of free time to put into it, but this year, I just decided I was going to make the time to do it for these people.”