On Wednesday 20 January, Lake City suffered its worst ice storm in decades, bringing down hundreds of trees and interrupting power for two days. Most exposed surfaces are covered with up to one inch of ice. In the lemonade-from-lemons department, however, those of us with fireplaces and woodstoves are replenishing our woodpiles…

In celebration of our company’s 35th anniversary, we have made an online exhibit of some of Lynn Dobson’s drawings. One of the most highly-regarded case designers of his generation, Dobson has proven to be equally at home in modern or historically-inspired idioms. Lynn A. Dobson: Drawings & Projects presents a selection of work from 1974–2009, and includes unrealized designs as well as built instruments.

The new organ at Highland Park United Methodist Church may yet have some undiscovered tricks up its sleeve (or its massive 32-foot Contra Diapason pipes that loom over the west transept). But Bradley Hunter Welch, the church’s organist and director of music and arts, certainly worked all manner of magic on it in a solo recital Sunday evening [22 November].

Climaxes in the Sonata eroica of the Belgian composer Joseph Jongen and Franz Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” piled on great cement loads of sound. Horizontally mounted trumpet stops blazed from both the front and the back of the church. […]

But there were also bubbly little flutes and piquant reeds in Max Drischner’s perky Variations on “O Run, Ye Shepherds”. Virgil Fox’s extravagant “orchestration” of the Bach chorale Come, Sweetest Death began at the threshold of audibility, laid on lush string stops and built up a massive surge of wind before a seamless crescendo disappeared into nothing.

Scott Cantrell, The Dallas Morning News