Me and a pony called Friday – on a freezing Welsh moor in April

Stable Girls are expected to turn out morning and evening, in all weathers, to perform repetitive tasks for dismal amounts of money – sounds familiar?

This winter I’ve discovered a whole untapped aspect of my wardrobe, perfect for winter organ playing – my horse-riding gear. I’m not talking boots, bits and bridles here*  but the sort of clothing that riders throw on every morning before they stump down to the stables for another round of mucking out and dressage practice.

So girls, visit your local Tack Store rather than the High Street for warm, practical, and inexpensive clothes for playing in.   The gilets and padded waistcoats are particularly good, as are the fleeces designed to keep your neck nice and warm along with the rest of you, and thermal trousers and undergarments for that desperate sub-zero church practice slot.

I have a black quilted gilet from Shires which I think is very smart – more Star Trek than Stable Girl actually.  I am slightly tempted even to play in my sticky-bum jodphurs (designed to keep you in the saddle, and possibly also from sliding off the organ bench?) but I think that’s probably going too far.

Colourwise, you’ll probably want to steer clear of the sea of bubble gum pink aimed at the younger rider – too garish even for the third Sunday in Advent.  You’ll find most grown-up Stable Girl Style clothes are in sober colours (to cope with mud, and what are euphemistically called stable stains) and wash like a dream (same reason).

Also check carefully for inappropriate slogans  – playing next Sunday with “Frisky Filly” in large letters across your back might send the wrong message to elderly male members of the congregation.

*Sorry about that.  I have noticed that some non-riders’ eyes light up at the mere mention of horsey gear, thinking that the riding fraternity always have something kinky going on.  And if you don’t believe me, try leaving a pair of  riding boots and a training whip in the back of your car, and clock the reaction of the next guy who helps you load your purchases from the DIY store or wherever.

What the well-dressed lady organist is wearing this winter

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Getting ready for an organ lesson – over the internet

Organ lessons can sometimes be like doctor’s appointments – you have your allotted time, and leave with half a dozen questions still hanging in your head.  When Neil Cockburn, Head of Organ Studies at Mount Royal University Conservatory in Calgary, Canada, offered an experiment with distance learning to students at the RCO Summer Course in August, I thought it was fun in principle, and wanted to try it.  What I didn’t expect to find was that as a learning method, it had advantages over an ordinary organ lesson.  I had time to shape my questions, and think through exactly what I wanted to know.  There was less pressure.   And at the end I had a permanent record of Neil’s advice to refer to, like a personal YouTube Channel, rather than trying to remember exactly what my teacher said from a few scrawled notes.

Neil is looking to offer teaching from Calgary to more students – as he says “You may have a specific question about registration or another feature of your own instrument, and your teacher can’t make the journey to advise in person – or teachers may be unavailable where you live.  We have all these wonderful resources here in Calgary – but are a long way from everyone.  Learning via the internet is the obvious answer.   At the moment we are trouble-shooting the technology and testing the ideas – eventually we would like to offer two-way distance learning, at the organ.”

The process is in theory simple – you record yourself playing.  You send the recording to your teacher, along perhaps with scans of the relevant bars of music.  Then you have a video conference at a mutually suitable time to discuss it.  Your teacher then can email instructions and videos back.

 We are on the brink of technology that will let you get a link from anywhere. So if you are 4000 miles apart, it no longer matters.

Of course, persuading the technology to do what you have in mind can be a bit of a digital wrestling match, first time round, and you have have to stay cheerful about this*.   I made a test recording first off**, and sent it to Neil, to make sure the iPad was going to work as a recording device.   He was happy with both sound and vision, and here’s my lesson video for real – a few bars of Matthew Locke’s Voluntary in A from Melothesia, one of the ARCO set pieces.  I wanted Neil’s advice on the ornaments, and the outbursts of  of demi-semi quavers from bar 34 onwards (like how do you make them secure for an exam?)

When we had our conference call it was 10.30pm in the UK, and 3pm in Calgary, but it was as if the miles didn’t exist.   Neil had recorded some videos to help me with the scale passages – here’s one:

video © Neil Cockburn/Mount Royal University Conservatory

Possibly the best bit for me was solving the vexing issue of the final cadence in the Locke – which in the Faber edition is bizarre and ambiguous.  A few clicks at either end of our conversation and we both had a facsimile of the original manuscript on our screens, courtesy of a link Neil sent me from Petrucci Music Library.  With his help I translated the 17th century original…as a straightforward 4-3 suspension, of course!   A neat bit of scholarship, accomplished in seconds, even though teacher and pupil were 4000 miles apart.

If you would like to know more about this project, you can contact Neil at ncockburn@mtroyal.ca.

Ultimately he is suggesting that distance learning on these lines would cost about the same as a lesson in person – say 90 minutes (taking into account the background work) at the usual hourly teaching rate.

*What I used:  The filming was the most straightforward part.  Smart phones and tablets are good at making the most of interior lighting, even in organ lofts.  I recorded myself on my iPad, propped on hymn books on the edge of the organ balcony.  With more time you could probably devise something better: stands and tripod mounts for tablets are available – though this is another expense for a student, and something else to cart around along with shoes, music, and other organist clobber.  A digital camera would be just fine of course, and Neil suggests a laptop lid with built-in camera would also be good option. 

Neil and I set up a shared Dropbox folder to exchange the videos.  I wanted to see if I could do the whole process just using a mobile device,  but trying to upload the videos to Dropbox at the church over 3G was an expensive use of data and very slow (a wireless connection in a church is kind of rare in the UK)  so I had to wait until I got home to a decent broadband connection. 

We had our conference using Facetime as we both had Mac devices, but Skype would have worked just as well.  Email, of course, kept the ball rolling, especially as a secondary communication channel during our video conference.

** NB Girls, check your camera angles.  If you wear a skirt, and are in the habit of nonchalantly kicking your heels up over the organ bench to dismount, don’t do it towards the lens.   Not a good look.

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Five questions for…Neil Cockburn

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The distinctive tower of St Nicholas Cathedral is a well-known Newcastle landmark   /rodjonesphotography

Do you know anyone – of any age – who you think might secretly hanker after playing the pipe organ?   Who lives in the north of England?  The Great North Organ Day hits Newcastle on Saturday 17th May.   Based around Newcastle’s two Cathedrals of St Mary and St Nicholas, it has something for everyone – recitals, masterclasses, hands-on tuition, advice on pipe and digital organs, and a pianist conversion workshop (churches, I’m sure you know someone you can send on this!)

Meet Gordon Stewart (from BBC Songs of Praise), James Lancelot (Organist at Durham Cathedral), Anne Marsden Thomas (RCO Academy) and Rosemary Field (RSCM) – and also Duncan Matthews, works manager at Durham organ builders Harrison & Harrison, who will give some insight into the design, construction and maintenance of the church’s most valuable asset.

Coming from the north of England myself (er…Middlesbrough if you must know, one of Newcastle’s scruffier neighbours) I am proud to be a sponsor of the Great North Organ Day.  It’s also sponsored (and organised) by the RSCM, the IOA and the Newcastle and District Society of Organists.   Booking forms and more details can be found at www.greatnorthorganday.co.uk.

You might also like to read about the Royal Festival Hall organ, built, and recently restored by Harrison & Harrison, and an interview with Anne Marsden Thomas, here:

Ralph Downes and the Royal Festival Hall organ

Five questions for…Anne Marsden Thomas

A 50s revival – the London Royal Festival Hall organ

The post Create an organist (or just have a good day out) – The Great North Organ Day appeared first on The Lady Organist.

I play for Margaret Phillips on the Frobenius organ at The Queen’s College, Oxford /Simon Williams

Slightly daunting to have a lesson on Bach with Margaret Phillips after her exemplary Bach recital the night before – and on the same organ too. But she was generous in sharing the registrations she used, and many other small elements that go to make up her outstanding performances.

Great to Pedal is an English invention, she admonished one of us – this organ is perfectly balanced throughout and doesn’t need it. (This organ being the 1965 Frobenius at The Queens College, Oxford, a typical organ reform movement instrument, with individual casework for all the divisions, and the pedals in completely separate towers either side.)   When someone tentatively suggested a registration of 8′ + 2′ she said that they probably didn’t use it in Bach’s time –  it doesn’t really work on historic instruments.

Much of the lesson was taken up by finding suitable speeds for pieces, and maintaining them. Any Bach fugue is basically allegro, said Margaret – and trills are often easier if the piece is that little bit faster. A draggy pedal line doesn’t help – keep the notes short – a good way to get a sense of the level of articulation needed between the notes is to play the pedal line on a manual, with just one finger.

We spent some time on the suspirans figure (a three note upbeat) – which occurs all over Bach, for example in Leibster Jesu, wir sind hier BWV 731, which I was playing.  Make a tiny lift BEFORE the strong beat she said. This feels slightly counter intuitive, but she’s absolutely right, and I’m practising this in now.

Listening to Margaret, Thomas Trotter, Graham Barber playing this week, it’s tempting to believe that they must inhabit a sunlit plateau free of the worries that bedevil lesser organists.  I asked Margaret how she managed to keep her playing so intense and precise right through to the end of the recital. ”The B minor Prelude and Fugue (BWV544) I have played a lot of times”, she said, “so it was a good one to end on. And the chorale preludes in the middle of the recital were slow, so they gave me a little bit of a breather.”

Earlier in the course I asked Thomas Trotter  how he knew a piece was ready for performance, and wouldn’t have weak moments.   “Well I’m City Organist for Birmingham, so I can try things out at Town Hall Recitals where I’m not nervous of making a mistake” he said (!) But he did add – yes, it is a problem for all of us.   His advice to us was to record ourselves to add a bit of pressure, play pieces as voluntaries if we are church organists: – there are no magic answers it seems, just commonsense and lots of practice.

Margaret Phillips studied with Ralph Downes and Marie-Claire Alain, and quickly gained an international reputation as a soloist after her Royal Festival Hall debut. Alongside her busy concert career she has been a member of the Council of the Royal College of Organists, and President of the Incorporated Association of Organists. She is currently Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music in London. She regularly gives masterclasses at home and abroad and has served on international competition juries.   Her critically acclaimed recordings include the completely organ works of Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens and Stanley, and in March 2012 the final volume of her recordings of the complete organ works of Bach was released – the first two CDs received 5 star reviews and have been hailed as some of the finest performances of Bach chorale preludes on disc.   Margaret’s website is here.

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Thomas Trotter gets double-booked

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Sleeping at Merton

Ralph Downes and the Royal Festival Hall organ

Marie-Claire Alain – Maitresse de l’orgue

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James Parsons (photo credit: Timothy Easter)

James Parsons is teaching us in Oxford this week, and even persuaded us today that transposition and harmonisation at sight were great fun – well almost.   He’s an enormously busy recitalist and teacher – organ tutor at the Birmingham Conservatoire and the RCO Academy Organ School, and Head of Student Development for the Royal College of Organists.  As soon as our course is over he’s running Set Your Sights! – an inspirational course giving teenage organists a taste of the organ scholar experience.  (More details at the bottom of the page.)   Inamongst he has managed to fit in an interview for the blog – and here are his answers to my five questions:

Which piece of music are you studying at the moment and why?
César Franck’s Prière—dusky, musky and hauntingly captivating—vying, in my view, for ‘Franck’s best piece’ with his Fantaisie-idylle in A.  I’ve long been aware of this alluring music, with its Wagnerian harmonic landscape, and have ‘hacked through’ it in private many times in the past, though back-burnering it as a shrine to visit with due observance in the future.  An encounter to one of Cavaillé-Coll’s three finest, happily unaltered, instruments last summer—that at St Étienne in Caen—alerted me that years are just slipping by and the time for learning Priére (that’s just ‘fingering’, yer know!) had come: had just been ravished by those fonds! But how did Franck really stretch those huge chords and play legato, well-endowed though we know he was! Not prepared to discuss my own endowments on your blog, Morwenna, but am enjoying devising ‘ways and means’! Happily, this week based in Oxford and with some free time between classes, I can spend time practising at my own College, Exeter, where I was Organ Scholar way back in the last Millennium—and  gain surrogate inspiration from the faux-Cavaillé in our  Sainte-Chapelle-inspired College shrine. A senior moment, of sorts!!

What has been your best experience as an organist?
Recently—the warmth of reception and huge audiences I experienced for two recitals I gave in Russia (Moscow RC Cathedral, and Kazan Conservatorium): sincere emotional response coupled with perceptive critique.

What has been your worst experience as an organist?
Oh—the start of the Albinoni Adagio—programmed at Oundle international Festival with strings under the baton of a mature conductor/ pianist/ broadcaster delivering his downbeat without reference to the monitor to verify I’d reached the console.

What’s the best piece of advice you were given by an organ teacher?  (and who was it?)
“Mind your back” (the late, great George Miles—my second ever lesson at the age of 10) – referring, I think, to the importance of good posture at the console!  George deserves much greater recognition for his enlightenment back in the 1950s to ’80s, for his accomplished playing, and his hugely prescient influence as a teacher.   (For more on George Miles see George Miles WikipediaWikipedia.)

What would be your own best piece of advice for student organists?
Learn oodles of repertoire as soon as you can (but properly—that’s just ‘fingering’, yer know!)  The younger you are when you engage with new pieces the more deeply they’ll settle.

SET YOUR SIGHTS!  based in Merton College this Saturday 12th April, gives teenage organists a taste of what it is like being an organ scholar: playing the organ, singing, and directing a choir.  Tutors this year alongside James are Margaret Phillips, Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music, and one of today’s foremost recording artists, and Jeremy Summerley, Sterndale Bennett Lecturer in Music at the Royal Academy of Music, and a renowned choral conductor on the national stage.  Students will sing, conduct and play the organ in a service of Choral Evensong at the end of the day (5pm in Merton College Chapel) which is open to all.  For future courses keep an eye on the events page, or the RCO website.

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Thomas Trotter gets double-booked

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Sleeping at Merton

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You can find it here.

The post More pedals-only repertoire appeared first on The Lady Organist.

Henry Fairs

Henry Fairs is Head of Organ Studies at Birmingham Conservatoire and Organist to the University of Birmingham, UK, and his musical career began as a chorister at Leominster Priory.  After graduating he studied in France and Germany, and was a prize-winner in a number of organ competitions including First Prize in the Odense International Organ Competition in Denmark.  Now he is an immensely busy concert organist, when not teaching.  This year he’s going back to Denmark, to Germany and Canada, as well as playing all around the UK.  Henry gave the opening recital on our RCO Summer Course this year, on the new Mander chamber organ, destined for Westminster Abbey.  (More about that here.)

Here are Henry’s answers to my five questions:

Which piece of music are you studying at the moment and why?
I am currently revisiting Bach’s Canonic Variations and chorale settings from the Leipzig autograph in preparation for concerts later this year.

What has been your best experience as an organist?
The luxury of having time to spend completely absorbed in great music, both alone and together with wonderful teachers and students. Playing great instruments, constant learning, achieving personal goals and helping others to do the same.

What has been your worst experience as an organist?
Probably being a church organist (at one place in particular). I don’t do that any more!

What’s the best piece of advice you were given by an organ teacher? (and who was it?)
I have had so many great teachers who have given me so much and to whom I’m profoundly grateful that it would be impossible to single out one. If pushed, I might choose ‘think only about the music’.

What would be your own best piece of advice for student organists?
Be really well prepared and listen.

Henry’s Bach Project has just got underway – 15 concerts over 3 years, of exceptional music on exceptional instruments.  He’s keeping a blog about the project here - and click below to hear Henry play Bach and explain his thinking behind his choice of music and instruments.  The next set of concerts, focussing on the Leipzig Chorales, are coming up soon on 14th, 21st and 28th October, all at 18.30, on the 2012 William Drake organ in the OBE Chapel of St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

Henry Fairs’ website is here, and you can follow him on Twitter @HenryFairs

RCO Summer Course 2013 – the Lord Mayor’s Palace

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Anne Marsden Thomas

Anne Marsden Thomas is the Head of the RCO Academy Organ School, co-ordinating the activities of a team of teachers and the studies of around 300 organ students.   In 1990 she was responsible for the National Learn the Organ Year, which attracted over 2,000 applicants – a huge number of organists looking for good teaching.  Anne established the St Giles International Organ School, based at St Giles Cripplegate Church in the City of London, to respond to this need, and this has just been taken under the stewardship of the Royal College of Organists to form the RCO Academy Organ School.   Anne directs the splendid Summer Course at St Giles, which attracts over 70 students each year from around the world.   More on the Summer Course here.    Anne is Director of Music at St Giles Cripplegate, and her concert and teaching work has taken her to Japan and the US, as well as all over Europe and the UK.  She has made several recordings, including the organ music of Henry Smart on the St Giles organ.

Here are Anne’s answers to my five questions:

Which piece of music are you studying at the moment and why?
Since I stopped giving recitals I mainly learn pieces that my students need or that will suit my church services.  For example,  I decided that my summer church organ voluntaries would be the lively movements from the Bach concerto transcriptions so that’s one book in my music case at the moment.

What has been your best experience as an organist?
Playing the last movement of Whitlock’s Sonata at St. Giles at 4 a.m. during our fundraising 6-day marathon several years ago.  I love the piece and it felt magical to play such passionate music in the middle of the night.

What has been your worst experience as an organist?
Turning up to play a recital at a venue which will remain nameless, only to find that the organ was in a terrible state: missing notes, inconsistent speech, several cyphers.   Ugh!  (There was nearly a happy ending to this experience.  I turned the organ off to go out for a breath of air and sanity, and when I returned the organ refused to turn on again.  The relief!  Unfortunately the resident organist showed up and got the organ started, so I had to limp through the recital anyway.)

What’s the best piece of advice you were given by an organ teacher?  (and who was it?)
‘Listen!’  Dame Gillian Weir.  Actually, she didn’t exactly say that, but that was always the effect of her teaching: to make one listen to what the music was really saying.
 
What would be your own best piece of advice for student organists?
Play your best and don’t worry about others judging you.

Anne has drawn on her long experience of teaching and playing to compile and edit the repertoire for the Oxford Service Music for Organ graded anthologies; one set (3 volumes) for manuals only, the second set (3 volumes) for manuals and pedals. Within each book the pieces are grouped according to service needs into Preludes, Interludes, Processionals, and Postludes. The repertoire spans the 16th to the 21st century, with some new pieces written especially for the collection, and a number of pieces from the books are now on the ABRSM organ syllabus.  Oxford Service Music for Organ: Manuals and Pedals, Book 1 was winner of the Music Industries Association’s Best Classical Publication 2011.  They are published by OUP.

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Neil Cockburn

Neil Cockburn is Head of Organ Studies at Mount Royal University Conservatory, Artistic Director of the Calgary Organ Festival, and Director of MRU Conservatory’s Purcell Ensemble. He is also the continuo-player and organist for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. I’m looking forward to meeting him this summer when he is one of our tutors on the RCO Summer Course in London – when I will have to ask him how to get hailstones and frogs out of the organ (see below).

More on Neil and a link to his website at the bottom of the page.  In the meantime, here are his answers to my five questions:

Which piece of music are you studying at the moment and why?
I have a very varied performing routine – including organ and harpsichord as both soloist and ensemble member – so there are always many scores on my music desk at any one time! I’m currently preparing to accompany the choir of Calgary Anglican Cathedral on its UK tour to Exeter Cathedral, where they will sing the services for a week in July. So, that involves choral accompaniments primarily, and as I don’t play weekly in a church, many of the pieces are new to me. As for solo organ repertoire, the next completely new piece I will learn is the C.P.E. Bach Organ Concerto in G major Wq 34 for a performance in October with a Calgary chamber group – the Kensington Sinfonia. We chose that particular concerto because it fits the size of the ensemble (strings only), and it will highlight well the 2-manual pipe organ in the church where the concert will take place.

What has been your best experience as an organist?
I have two types of best experience – one related to instruments, and one related to playing with other musicians. Every time I travel somewhere and experience a beautiful instrument, I consider that a real perk of the job. One recent high point for me was playing the magnificent Taylor and Boody organ at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Secondly, because we organists tend to work a lot on our own, it’s always a wonderful experience for me to play in an ensemble or orchestra. Playing continuo for a large oratorio or Passion is always a highlight, and I will always cherish the memory of having brought to life the hailstones and frogs of Handel’s Israel in Egypt!

What has been your worst experience as an organist?
Two occasions come to mind, both involving large organs in concerts halls with mobile consoles. In each case there was an intermittent malfunction in the data communication between the console and the actual instrument, causing the computer to reset itself. The automatic reset meant that the instrument went dead for about 45 seconds. In both cases this happened multiple times during the rehearsals (on both occasions I was playing a concerto with orchestra), but thankfully it didn’t happen during the performances! However, it did make for very nerve-wracking experiences! Although I’m very grateful for the technological advances that have been made to modern instruments – such as sequencers – I don’t like the uncertainty of malfunction.

What’s the best piece of advice you were given by an organ teacher?
I have received so much wonderful advice from so many people over the years that condensing it down to one single nugget is impossible. I have been grateful for suggestions on which piece to learn next, which exam to attempt (or not attempt), which shoes to wear, how to deal with performance nerves, and this is a really good one: never to check-in your music or shoes in your hold luggage on a flight! But probably, the most significant wisdom all of my music teachers shared with me was how to practise, and the common theme there was – prepare for success by simplifying and working slowly!

What would be your own best piece of advice for student organists?
Use the internet wisely! There are many excellent free online resources nowadays, but sadly there are far more poor quality ones. Look to your teacher for help in filtering the good from the bad. This is particularly true for YouTube, where there are many performances that do not incorporate current thinking on performance practice vis-à-vis registration and ornamentation and so on. Remember that people have the freedom to post anything they want to on YouTube, and they frequently do! Just because it’s there, doesn’t alone make it worthy of emulation. Ask yourself –who is the performer? (Try to find a biography online to confirm credibility.) On which instrument was the performance recorded? (ie are the sounds a suitable model in your own case? If you are studying Frescobaldi, but listening to a performance on Romantic instrument, you may not be able to learn much – unless you are specifically wondering how best to adapt Frescobaldi to your Father Willis.) Once again – look to your teacher for help. Ask for verification of a potential study aid before committing too much time to it.

Neil received his musical education at Oxford University (BA Hons, Music), the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK (MusM, Organ Performance, and the Professional Peformance Diploma, PPRNCM), the Conservatoire National de Région Rueil-Malmaison, France (Premier prix de perfectionnement), and the University of Calgary (PhD, Musicology).He won First Prize at the 1996 Dublin International Organ Competition, and has received numerous other prestigious awards, including the W. T. Best Memorial Organ Scholarship, a scholarship from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, and the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Prize. As an organ soloist he has given an all-encompassing spectrum of solo organ recitals on a wide range of instrument types, from all-Bach recitals on historically inspired organs, to symphonic programmes on romantic instruments, and concerts of entirely new works.  Learn more about him at his website.

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Roger Carter

Roger Carter studied with Sylvia Gostelow and Christopher Scarf and later with Richard Popplewell, gaining Fellowships from the Royal College of Organists and Trinity College of Music.  His subsequent studies have taken him around Europe – in 1984 he was awarded a Belgian Government Scholarship to study with the late Flor Peeters, and in 1988 was invited by Harald Vogel to take part in a recital on the organ of St Bavo, Haarlem.  In 1993 he studied early Italian music on organs of the period in Tuscany with Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini.   He is Director of Music at St John’s Church, Harpenden, England, and is often invited to tutor on organ courses, including the RCO St Giles Organ School – I have Roger to thank for some neat solutions to problems with an exam piece last year.

Which piece of music are you studying at the moment and why?
The 350th anniversary  of the death of Heinrich Scheidemann has given me the incentive to study some more of his very fine music. In July, I shall  be visiting the Katharinenkirche in Hamburg, where he was organist for over thirty years, to hear some of it played on the recently completed historical reconstruction of the organ there. That should be a fascinating experience.

What has been your best experience as an organist?
A difficult question! Probably having the thrilling opportunity to play the organ at St Bavo’s in Haarlem on several occasions, including playing some Weckmann in a composite recital there.

What has been your worst experience as an organist?
Arriving to take part in the Bruges organ competition in the 1980’s and discovering that I couldn’t physically play the first movement of Bach’s 6th Trio Sonata (on the copy of an historical pedal board) using the toes and heels technique which organists of my generation in the UK had generally been taught. This was a big wake-up call, not only to re-learn  my technique, but also to re-evaluate related interpretative issues.

What’s the best piece of advice you were given by an organ teacher?
Two very good pieces of advice:
1)    When I was a teenager and taking part in an organists’ holiday course at the RAM, the late Leslie Regan said, “Gentlemen(!), at your age you probably think that you are certain about everything, but the older you become, the less certain of anything you will be.” That taught me always to keep a questioning and open frame of mind.
2)    To think not only about when notes are released, but also the nature of the release. Harald Vogel is a big advocate of coordinated releases in early music and I found his thinking on this and many other matters very influential in modifying my playing style.

What would be your own best piece of advice for student organists?
For earlier repertoire, often think in other instrumental terms. Go and listen to and watch good ‘period instrument groups’ and notice the nature of their articulation, for example. What comes naturally to a string player, due to using a bow, or to a wind player, because of needing to breathe, is very pertinent to us as organists, where we don’t have the educational experience, to train our feet and fingers, of running out of bow or expiring through a lack of breath!

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Five questions for…Simon Williams

Five questions for…Gerdi Troskie

Five questions for…Anne Page

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