Gabriel Kney

Who is Gabriel Kney?

Gabriel Kney is a renowned Canadian builder of pipe organs based in London, Ontario.

Kney was born in Speyer-am-Rhein, Germany. At the age of 15, he apprenticed to Paul Sattel of Speyer to become an organ builder, and concurrently studied organ and composition with Erhard Quack and Ludwig Doerrat at the Bishop’s Institute for Church Music in Speyer.

In 1951, he moved to Canada to work as a voicer with the Keates Organ Co.

In 1955 he formed with John Bright the Kney and Bright Organ Co to build tracker organs. Blanton described their first instrument as "a handsome little organ with mechanical action, slider chests, 1-3/4" pressure". They were at the vanguard of the tracker organ revival in Canada, so much so that they were then to build 30 electro-pneumatic organs before customers caught on and started ordering instruments with mechanical action. In the early 1960s, they rebuilt the organs of Aeolian Hall in London and St Michael's Cathedral in Toronto.

In 1967, Kney formed Gabriel Kney Pipe Organ Builders, Ltd., and by 1990 he and his seven employees had built more than 110 organs, mostly for customers in the Great Lakes region. Some of the best examples of this company's designs are the organs of Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, Ontario, Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City, Christ Church Parish in Pensacola, Florida and the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.