Lynn Dobson
Lecturer - “Details and Construction of the Kimmel Center Organ”

Lynn Dobson is President and Artistic Director of Dobson Pipe Organ Builders, a firm that has acquired an impressive reputation by the completion of over 80 new organs and 35 restorations and rebuilds of older instruments since the company’s founding in 1974. While in high school, Lynn was awarded a scholarship by the James J. Hill Foundation to attend summer design classes at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. This experience directed him into a lifelong journey of discovering the secrets of good design. Lynn studied Art and Industrial Education at Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska. He took the greatest interest in three-dimensional design classes and specialized in sculpture. Exposure to the organ and its music first came through his sister, a church organist, and continued through personal reading, study and working for an organ service company during his college years. At the Dobson shop in Lake City, Iowa, Lynn generates the initial mechanical, tonal and visual designs of all new organs and continues to work closely with members of the firm as more detailed design decisions are made and construction takes place.

Nathan Laube
Girard College post-convention concert

Nathan Laube is a rising star among young organists. At age 15, he was accepted as a full scholarship student at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Now 18, he is a third-year student at the Curtis, where he studies organ with Alan Morrison and piano with Susan Starr. In March 2003, he placed second in the Chicago American Guild of Organists/Quimby Regional Competition for Young Organists, and earlier this year returned to win that competition’s first prize. Nathan was named the first Organ Scholar at the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church in August 2006. His primary duties there include service playing and accompanying the esteemed 120-voice Senior Choir, under the direction of Jeffery Brillhart. Additionally, from 2005-2006, Nathan served as the accompanist for the acclaimed Philadelphia Choral Arts Society, a 100-voice symphonic chorus. Nathan has also served as one of the assistant organists at the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, the largest functioning musical instrument in the world located in Philadelphia’s former Wanamaker Department Store. In November of 2005 he appeared as the guest artist on WRTI Radio’s broadcast of “The Wanamaker Organ Hour,” for which he played many of his own transcriptions of orchestral works.

Irv Lawless
Roundtable Discussion - Möller Pitman Chest Repair

Irv Lawless began his organbuilding career in 1965 with the Lewis & Hitchcock firm in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was involved with the installation of a number of notable Aeolian-Skinner organs in Washington, D.C., including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and two instruments for National Presbyterian Church. In 1972 he began an organ maintenance company in Washington. He was appointed Tonal Manager at the Moller company in the late ’80s. In 1992 he formed the Lawless-Johnson Organ Company with John Johnson. This firm has built several new organs and performs organ maintenance work through the D.C. area.

Curt Mangel
Lecturer - “History and Current Status of the Wanamaker Organ and Friends of the Wanamaker”

Alan Morrison
Verizon Hall organ concert

Alan Morrison’s 2006 performance during the inaugural festival of the Dobson organ in Verizon Hall drew laudatory reviews from numerous national publications. He has recently been involved in collaborations with The Curtis Symphony Orchestra in the premier of a new concerto for organ by Eric Sessler (Verizon Hall), concerts with trumpeter Rodney Mack and Philadelphia Big Brass (Verizon Hall), and a concerto performance and adjudication in Denver. He has the distinct honor of having been chosen by his peers to perform for four national conventions of the American Guild of Organists and has won top prizes in numerous competitions. As a recording artist, Mr. Morrison has recorded eight critically acclaimed CDs. These and other concert performances are regularly featured on MPR’s Pipedreams, Performance Today. On television he has been featured on two episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and in May of 2003 he was selected to appear along with Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma for the Fred Rogers memorial service.

Michael A. Morvan
Lecturer - “Covering New Keyboards and the Restoration of Historical Keyboards”

Michael A. Morvan received industrial arts training in high school and was formally trained as a U.S. Navy machinist. While enrolled in a Baccalaureate program at Worcester State College he began his apprenticeship in Piano Technology and upon graduating started his own business. He soon realized that he had a passion and a knack for covering and restoring keyboards. He has applied machinist skills to the nearly lost art of key covering, and he employs nearly forgotten techniques and procedures once standard in key manufacturing. With his original Pratt & Read keyboard tooling equipment he provides repair and restoration techniques that incorporate traditional key manufacturing procedures. His company, Blackstone Valley Piano, continues to offer high quality keyboard and key frame restoration for organ and piano builders and rebuilders nationwide. Dedicated to advancing the art of keyboard covering and restoration, he always strives to add new processes and tooling that will make for a more professional and long-lasting job, and, most important, will always listen to a client’s ideas about how things should be done. Michael is a member of the Piano Technicians Guild and the Automatic Musical Instrument Collectors Association.

John Panning
Lecturer - “Details and Construction of the Kimmel Center Organ”

John A. Panning began studying organ in high school and has regularly played for church services ever since, providing him experiences with organs of all kinds. After graduating from high school he worked for Milwaukee area organbuilders Hammes-Foxe, acquiring his first taste of the organbuilding business. After two years with this small builder of mechanical action organs, he joined the Dobson firm and moved to Lake City in January of 1984. The shop was small at the time of John’s arrival and so he was engaged in all areas of organbuilding as well as service and tuning. From the outset he was interested and involved in the tonal aspects of organs and worked closely with the late Robert Sperling in voicing and tonal finishing. Beginning with Opus 59, in 1993, John was asked to assist with tonal design of new instruments and determine the pipe scales. This eventually led to his appointment as Tonal Director. John’s interests range from American bridge building to theology. John has studied many historic organs in Europe as well as important instruments by American builders. He has served two terms as the OHS Secretary, two terms as the AIO Secretary, and, since 1991, has served as North American Editor for the Journal of the International Society of Organbuilders.

Stephen L. Pinel
Lecturer - “A History of Philadelphia Organbuilding”

Stephen L. Pinel holds two degrees from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, and did further graduate study in historical musicology at New York University. His organ teachers have included James H. Lazenby, Eugene Roan, and Joan Lippincott, and his articles on organ history have appeared in many journals published both here and abroad. This fall, 2004, marks his twentieth anniversary as Archivist of the Organ Historical Society, and as Organist-Choirmaster at St. Cecelia’s R. C. Church in Iselin, New Jersey. Stephen has been an enthusiastic member of the OHS since 1973, and has served the organization under many guises; in 1989, he received the society’s Distinguished Service Award.