SAN DIEGO — San Diego Symphony organ curator Bob Knight will never be mistaken for the phantom of the opera. But he keeps such a low-key presence during concerts by the orchestra at Jacobs Music Center that he could almost be mistaken for a phantom — albeit a completely normal-looking and warmly congenial one who chuckles often and works closely with his trusted assistant.

“The best nights are when no one sees me and I don’t need to do anything at a concert because the organ works perfectly,” said Knight, a master organ builder and the founder of Knight Organ Company.

“When people do see me and ask what I’m doing backstage, I always tell them the same thing: ‘I’m sitting here hoping nothing happens! ‘ “

As he sat recently with a visitor on one side of the Jacobs Music Center stage, Knight smiled as he reflected on his anonymity with the orchestra he has served for several decades.

“The stage crew knows me. But there are a lot of symphony members who don’t know who I am — and I don’t know who they are,” said the Oceanside native, who works long hours before every concert that features the 104-year-old Robert-Morton Theatre Organ.

“We get our best work done when there is nobody here, which is why my assistant and I have recently been working from 6 p.m. to midnight to install new pipes. And when you tune the organ, it’s all done by ear. You’re listening to the pitches between two pipes. When something needs to be adjusted, you have to stop and really concentrate, so you don’t want anyone around.”

Just how rich and vibrant the organ sounds will be showcased on Friday and Saturday night.

The symphony — led by guest conductor Ludovic Morlot — will perform four pieces at the concerts. One of them is French composer Camille Saint-Saëns’ most celebrated organ work, Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, more commonly known as his Organ Symphony.

It will team the orchestra with organist Weicheng Zhao, who was featured at the symphony’s “Noel Noel” concerts last month. Zhao also played in the orchestra’s three October performances of Mahler’s Second Symphony, “Resurrection.” He counts himself as one of Knight’s newest admirers.

“Bob has an unwavering commitment to keeping the organ in absolutely top shape,” said Zhao, a faculty member at Pomona College and the organist, director of music and choir master at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.

“He is incredibly generous with his time and works tirelessly to make sure the organ is perfectly in tune and ready for any circumstances that may arise. He’ll also play the organ for me, so that I can go out in the concert hall and make sure the balance is right.”

Zhao’s admiration is shared by San Diego’s Michael Kaehr, a priest at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and noted organ-builder Manuel Rosales, who had a pivotal role in bringing to fruition the landmark, Frank Gehry-designed organ at Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall.

“Bob is incredibly clever and intuitive, but he doesn’t like the spotlight,” Rosales said. “He’s the perfect guy for that job with the San Diego Symphony, but he’s not a person who seeks adulation.”

“Bob’s very unassuming,” Kaehr agreed. “He’s a walking encyclopedia of organ-building, tuning and operating. He has all that knowledge right there in his fingertips.”

Virgil Fox-fueled epiphany

Knight turned 60 on Dec. 1. His lifelong passion for music in general and keyboards specifically took root even before he began taking piano lessons at age 5.

“I wanted to play the organ but my parents wouldn’t let me until I was tall enough for my feet to touch the pedals, which was when I was 8 or 9,” said Knight, who was still in grade school when he became a substitute organist at his family’s church.

The instrument, like organ-building, was in his blood.

The organ in the Knights’ home was made by his father. The family’s legacy of organ-building dates to at least the 1700s in England, where Thomas Knight apprenticed with John Byfield, the organ-builder for King George III.

There has been an organ-builder in each generation of the Knight family since then. Currently, at least two of Knight’s relatives also make organs — Phillip Knight in Oregon and William Knight in Georgia.

“My dad told me he always wanted to be a full-time organ builder,” said Bob Knight, who is married and has an adult son. “But he didn’t feel he could do it with a family and all his responsibilities.”

The younger Knight was drawn to mechanics, as well as organs. He began repairing everything from lawnmowers to motorcycles when he was still in grade school. He bought his first car, a Chevrolet Corvair, when he was 13. That was three years before he got his driver’s license.

How old was Knight when he began to drive his prized Corvair? He grinned before he replied.

“Can I take the fifth on that?” Knight asked, grinning again. “Things were different back then. You could get away with more! I had older friends and they would drive it — most of the time.”

Knight was in second grade when he attended his first concert at what is now Jacobs Music Center. (The downtown San Diego venue was known as Copley Symphony Hall from 1984 until last year, and as the Fox Theatre from its opening in 1929 until 1983.)

The concert he attended as a 7-year-old was by famed organist Virgil Fox (no relation to the Fox Theatre company). Hearing him was an epiphany for Knight, who decided on the spot he wanted to be a concert organist. He intensified his keyboard studies and began working with more accomplished teachers.

But Knight experienced a career-changing realization when he enrolled at what’s now Azusa Pacific University.

“It became quickly obvious to me that I wasn’t that good as an organist,” he said, laughing softly at the memory.

“San Diego was really a musical backwater when I was a kid. The symphony wasn’t that good back then, there weren’t that many musicians around, and my family went to a small church. Growing up in that kind of environment, you think you’re pretty good.

“But the first day I got to music school in college, it was immediately evident I wasn’t that talented. Seeing and hearing the other students play was a rude awakening. I got more and more disillusioned with my level of talent after seeing my friends at Azusa who were really talented.”

Knight then studied at Belmont University in Nashville. He returned to Azusa where he earned bachelor’s degrees in business administration and in music as an organ performance major.

After graduating, he did construction and building and grounds maintenance work. Asked to describe the relationship between having a business degree and the jobs he held, Knight replied: “Almost none.”

He began a steady job with Gibbs Flying Service at Montgomery Field. Its owner, Bill Gibbs, was a loyal supporter of the San Diego Symphony and encouraged Knight’s weekend organ-building projects.

Over time, Knight began devoting up to four days a week working on organs and spent less time at the office. He became a full-time organ-builder in 1995.

‘Enthusiasm and passion’

Within a decade, the Knight Organ company had 10 employees and maintained nearly three dozen church organs around San Diego County. It built — to exacting specifications — at least two new organs a year.

More crucially, Knight played a key role in rescuing the San Diego Symphony’s historic organ from impending oblivion when — in 2007 — a symphony board member lobbied to have the instrument removed from the orchestra’s downtown concert hall. They proposed the organ be replaced by a smaller electronic keyboard.

Such a move was aesthetically concerning for several reasons. Never mind that the instrument had sat unused from 1934 to 1968, when it was nursed back to tip-top condition by a dedicated group of volunteers. And never mind that the instrument had not been used even once in the first four years that Jahja Ling served as the symphony’s music director from 2004 to 2017.

Even so, the sound quality of any electronic keyboard would be unable to match a pipe organ’s rich fullness of sound and grandeur of appearance. And the life expectancy of a well-maintained pipe organ exceeds by decades, not years, that of an electronic keyboard.

Before any drastic moves could be taken, Ling contacted Knight, a Ramona resident who at the time had no direct involvement with the orchestra or its organ. Ling, who had never heard the seldom-used instrument, asked Knight to make a case to the board for keeping the organ.

Knight presented the board with a detailed overview of the organ’s history and musical attributes. He promised the board members that — if he failed to get the instrument back into good enough playing condition for them to make an informed decision — he would not charge them anything for his time and expertise.

“I worked two hours a day for two weeks putting the organ cable back together,” Knight said.

“The cable was about the size of an elephant’s trunk and had at least three or four thousand wires. They were all from the 1920s and all the same color, and there was no manual that old for me to refer to. Each wire had to be stripped, and it was incredibly laborious and tedious work. But after I finished, the organ sounded fine and the board voted to restore it.

“Jahja asked me: ‘What will we do if the organ ever breaks?’ I said: ‘I’ll fix it.’ “

Knight has maintained, tuned and constantly improved the instrument ever since. He also painstakingly dismantled, stored, rebuilt and lovingly looked after the organ during the $125 million renovation and redesign of Jacobs Music Center between 2020 and 2024.

For most concerts that feature the organ, the organist plays the instrument backstage, heard but completely unseen by the audience, conductor and orchestra alike. Knight sits right next to the organist, ready to spring into action should the need arise.

“At other venues, like Disney Hall, usually the organ curator is not there for the rehearsals and performances,” said Zhao, who will play the organ here at the symphony’s Friday and Saturday concerts. “But Bob is right next to me all the time. That gives me such great confidence that he is right there to answer any questions, handle any last-minute requests and take care of things if anything goes wrong with the organ, which has not happened to me.

“The audience doesn’t know or see what Bob does. But it’s extremely important for people to know he is behind the scenes and what it’s like for him to work with thousands of pipes, which he always does that with so much enthusiasm and passion. When I work with him, it sounds like the instrument is part of his body and his life, and that always inspires me.”

Has anything ever gone wrong with the organ?

Just once, years ago, during a symphony concert featuring organist Robert Plimpton. Knight quickly realized one of the organ’s softest string-tone pipes had become stuck. Equipped with his trusty pen knife and a headlamp, he scurried up a ladder to the backstage organ chamber, located the stuck pipe and fixed it on the spot.

“Plimpton kept playing and the repair took maybe two minutes,” Knight said. “Most people didn’t notice a thing, except for a few organist friends of mine who were in the audience.”

Because Zhao will perform on stage for this weekend’s concerts, Knight will be seated nearby in the audience, not backstage. But he will be in an aisle seat, just in case anything arises that suddenly requires him to arise.

“I keep saying I’m going to retire,” Knight said. “But the prospects of that keep getting dimmer and dimmer, especially with this organ. If I had to give up everything, this would absolutely be the last thing I’d give up.”

Saint-Saëns: Violin Concerto and Organ Symphony

Featuring: The San Diego Symphony, conducted by Ludovic Morlot, with violinist Jeff Thayer and organist Weicheng Zhao

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Where: Jacobs Music Center, 750 B St., downtown

Tickets: $39-$120

Phone: 619-235-0804

Online: sanddiegosymphony.org

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