“There’s more variety, just more fleshing out the songs.”
“I’m playing better,” Castoldi said, smiling. He is also playing the new organ more often than he played the old keyboard, because, as Bauman said, it offers more bells and whistles.
“There’s like a revival going on,” Castoldi said.Ĭastoldi does not play at every Knicks and Rangers home game, but, with the new organ in place, he has found himself playing at more games so far this season. Although it is a digital organ that can produce many types of sounds, the Roland can, perhaps best of all, reproduce the thunderous, pipe-organ sound of a Wurlitzer. “It’s one of the places where it started in the days before you had recorded music available.”Ĭastoldi’s boss, Marc Bauman, the senior vice president who produces in-game entertainment at the Garden, had a chance to buy a floor model Roland from a dealer on Long Island. “There’s an organ tradition here in New York,” Castoldi said. Gladys Goodding not only played at the old Garden on Eighth Avenue but also at Brooklyn Dodgers games at Ebbets Field.
He wrote one of the N.H.L.’s most famous goal songs, “Slapshot,” which debuted in 1995 and is played after the Rangers score at home, with fans heartily singing along.Ĭastoldi bent to the trend of playing more recorded music during sporting events, but he grew up in New York idolizing organists like Jane Jarvis at Shea Stadium and Eddie Layton, known as Limo, at Yankee Stadium. Castoldi, 53, a classically trained musician with horn-rimmed glasses and a shaggy mane of dark hair, is the music director at the Garden, which means he also handles recorded music at Knicks and Rangers games.