The sound of hockey

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This article was published 24/10/2016 (3628 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Trevor Olfert will be pulling out all the stops to keep fans entertained during home games with the Winnipeg Jets.

Olfert is the new organist for the Jets and True North Sports and Entertainment. While his instrument doesn’t have the traditional pipes and pedals of an organ (it’s actually six MIDI keyboards), the live organ sound still harkens back to Jets 1.0 and the old Winnipeg Arena, he said.

“If I think back to when I was a kid, I’d be at the Jets games and I’d hang back with my dad to listen to the organ guy play a few songs while everybody left, and now 30 years later it’s me doing it,” Olfert said.

The Linden Woods local has been writing and performing music in Winnipeg for dozens of years and is the director of the Open Sky Orchestra, which hosts benefit concerts for myeloma research each year. Olfert also teaches at St. George School in St. Vital.

With years of experience, Olfert is coming into the position with a repertoire of 200 songs and crowd prompts to choose from during games. Located in the upper bowl behind section 318, Olfert also has creative control over the music he plays, improvising and mashing up songs to enhance the atmosphere within the MTS Centre.

“I think anytime you bring a live musician it just creates a little more intimacy, a little more feeling of connectedness,” Olfert said. “Because we went with a keyboard setup that gives us lots of options down the road… Right now the definite push is to keep things more heritage oriented, so very organ sounding.”

According to Kyle Balharry, senior director of game presentation and broadcast services with True North Sports and Entertainment, bringing the organ back to Jets games allows anyone and everyone to feel like part of the game. It’s also a fitting addition to the fan experience given this year’s NHL Heritage Classic.

“The organ is an immediate sound of hockey,” Balharry said. “It makes people instantly feel that they’re at a hockey rink and it kind of felt a little lonely without an organ, perhaps, since we moved into the MTS Centre.”

Olfert’s talents have been put to use at a handful of games at the MTS Centre already and he contributed the organ music for the Heritage Classic on Oct. 22 and 23 at Investors Group Field.

During the program, Olfert tries to cover the decades going back to 1950 in an effort to connect young and old through music. So far, he said the experience has been surreal.

“If I can get a boy and his dad talking about what music they heard and one connects it to Star Wars and the other connects it to Elvis or The Beatles or something like that, I think that’s great,” he said.

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