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the new Casavant Frères pipe organ at First United Methodist Church in Dallas received its final touches from the builders friday afternoon. i happened to drop by the church following the Renzo Piano lecture, just to see if they were still voicing pipes. as it turned out, they had just finished, and at that moment, were demonstrating the MIDI capabilities of the instrument to Tim Effler, organist at FUMC (and my organ teacher). i heard the computer playing a technically immaculate performance of the toccata from Widor's Organ Symphony No. 5... on full organ. thankfully, the tonal finishing there is not as hard-hitting and edgy as the other cassavants i have heard, and it was actually a nice full sound. i was also impressed that the room handled the bass frequencies so nicely -- it used to be really dead and soaked up every bit of low frequency sound. thanks to the hardening of the ceiling, the room has a recognizable reverberation time now! after the MIDI performance, which got old after a while (because of its lack of human expression), Tim sat down and played through some pieces to show off the softer stops, and a few pretty nice things on the solo division -- namely a big sounding harmonic flute.