Meet our team

J. Thomas Mitts was Associate Professor of Organ and Director of Church Music Studies at the Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, Virginia from 2002 through 2020. He served simultaneously as Organist and Choirmaster at Augustana Lutheran Church in Washington DC from 1993 until 2021, where he also recorded Marcel Dupré’s Passion Symphony and Louis Vierne’s Symphony No. 3 on the church’s Létourneau organ. Dr. Mitts holds two degrees from Louisiana State University and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Iowa. He has held academic appointments at Cornell College of Mt. Vernon, Iowa; Old Dominion University of Norfolk, Virginia; and the University of New Orleans in Louisiana. A competition winner and frequent recitalist, Dr. Mitts has performed at organ festivals in France Belgium, and Russia as well as for chapters of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society across the United States.

Andrew Forrest began his organ building career with Létourneau in February 1999, became Artistic Director in 2008, and was appointed President of the company in 2022. He oversees the company’s entire operation with a focus on individual projects, including meeting with clients, preparing proposals, setting pipe scales and directing the tonal finishing for all instruments.An organist himself, Mr. Forrest became interested as a teenager with the art of pipe scaling, mixture compositions, reed shallots, and other details that go into tone production. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton University.Mr. Forrest is Past President of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America (APOBA), having served from May 2020 through May 2022. He previously served on the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Organbuilders and is currently on the Board of Directors of the Organ Historical Society.

Georges Trépanier holds a diploma in administration from HEC Montréal’s School of Management and was named the company’s General Manager in March 2015. He is responsible for the company’s financial affairs as well as government relations. In his youth, Mr. Trépanier studied piano privately for seven years which later translated into an interest in organ building. He has worked on the installation of several pipe organs in the United States and Australia over the years.

François Carrier began his organ building career in 1989 after formal training as a cabinetmaker. After having worked in several departments within the company, he completed several intensive courses in architectural drafting and AutoCAD and was promoted to the positions of Technical Designer in 2008 and Senior Designer in 2014. Working closely with Mr. Demers and Mr. Forrest, Mr. Carrier is responsible for translating an organ’s initial design into completed production drawings for construction in our workshops.

The company’s visual proposals strive to give a realistic sense of how an instrument will appear once installed. Claude Demers is the creative mind behind each instrument’s visual design and he oversees the preparation of our three-dimensional illustrations. He holds a diploma in architecture as well as a certificate in electronics. Mr. Demers is also an accomplished wood sculptor, having created several of the wood carvings on the company’s instruments. He has been with the company since 1988.

Fernand Létourneau began working in the pipe organ in February 1965 at Casavant Frères, working under the tonal direction of Lawrence Phelps and Gerhard Brunzema. With Brunzema’s encouragement, Mr. Létourneau embarked on a study trip to Europe in 1978 to examine voicing techniques employed in historic pipe organs. In January 1979, he founded his own company in Ste-Rosalie which he subsequently built into one of the most respected organbuilding enterprises in the world. A long-time member of the International Society of Organbuilders and the American Institute for Organbuilders, Mr. Létourneau served as co-president of the joint AIO-ISO convention held in Montréal in 2010. He was awarded the Royal Canadian College of Organists’ Prize of Excellence in 2016.

Dudley Oakes worked with Létourneau for over thirty six years and was responsible for most of the company’s instruments throughout the United States from 1990 through 2023. He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan and served at several prestigious churches across the United States. Dudley was also a fine recitalist, performing widely across North America as well as in Italy, France, Germany, England, and Russia. A desire to elevate the pipe organ among musical instruments led Dudley to purchase Orgues Létourneau in 2019. As president, his all-too-short tenure focused on the musical qualities of our pipe organs; discussions about musical requirements and roles were frequent, including evaluations of how a given instrument might lead a hymn or might present a certain piece of music. Indeed, this will be Dudley’s legacy: a resolve that Létourneau pipe organs must provide moments of extraordinary beauty through sound and music.