Dobson Pipe Organ Builders

File:Merton College Chapel Organ, Oxford, UK - Diliff.jpg

The organ of Merton College Chapel, Oxford (2013)

Dobson Pipe Organ Builders is a manufacturer of pipe organs based in Lake City, Iowa.

The company was founded in 1974 by Iowa native Lynn A. Dobson, who serves as President and Artistic Director. The company employs 20, and has produced over 90 new instruments. It has also restored a number of historic organs, and tunes and maintains a variety of instruments in the upper Midwest. First known for the construction of mechanical action organs, the company has since the 1990s also undertaken the construction of organs with electric actions, most employing slider windchests. Notable instruments built by Dobson include the organ at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, California (which includes some pipes retained from the organ of the former St. Vibiana's Cathedral), and the organ for the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Major church installations include a 95-rank organ installed at Highland Park United Methodist Church, Dallas, Texas, in 2009, and an 82-rank instrument installed at Independent Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Alabama in 2012. In 2011, it was announced that Dobson will build a new mechanical action instrument for Merton College Chapel, making the firm one of a very few American organ builders to send its work to England.

External links

• Dobson Pipe Organ Builders, Ltd.