I hope that I am not giving my colleague attention he would prefer not to have had, but it seemeth to me that all should know that our friend, Gavin, played a very successful master's recital last night. He is a student of Robert Bates, who, at the University of Houston, is Houston's finest organ professor (who recently released the complete works of Jean Titelouze); he is much more scholarly than the organ professor at Houston's other university, good as he is. Gavin's programme opened (bravely) with Bach's Dorian Toccata and Fugue; this was followed by Boyvin's Suite du 5me Ton, Premier Livre d'Orgue. This was beautifully played and would have been an even greater treat had there been a plain-chant canticle sung in alternation with it. Next was the first and second movements of Mendelssohn's Sonata in A-Major (Op. 65, No. 3). In this and the two Alain pieces which followed (Premier Fantaisie, and Postlude pur l'Office de Complies) Gavin really sounded at home, and his playing of them almost achieved the ease and fluency of improvisations. The programme closed with an energetic performance of Buxtehude's great G-minor Praeludium (Bux 149). The organ played was the two-year-old Frits at St Phillip's Presbyterian Church, which, though it is equiped with blowers, can be pumped by hand.

Congratulations to Gavin... and to St Dunstan's Episcopal Church for having such a fine and well qualified organist and choirmaster. (Incidentally, St Dunstan, if one is unaware, is the patron saint of music who really existed, and should be given at least equal, if not more, attention than that other one, whose life and existence are highly debatable. [Purcell and Handel should have written odes on St Dunstan's day!].)