Organ lessons over the internet – yes it works
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,…
Create an organist (or just have a good day out) – The Great North Organ Day
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…
RCO Easter Course 2014 – a lesson with Margaret Phillips
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…
Five Questions for…..James Parsons
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…
Five questions for…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…
Five questions for…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,…
Five questions for…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…
Five questions for…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…
Five questions for…Simon Williams
Simon is Organist and Director of Music at St. George’s Church, Hanover Square, in the centre of London. Simon and the choir there broadcast regularly on BBC Radio3 and Radio4. He trained at Durham University and The Royal College…
Five questions for…Gerdi Troskie
Gerdi Troskie is one of the RCO’s tutors, and the person most responsible for the improvements in my organ technique over the past two years. She studied post-graduate with the early music specialist Jacques van Oortmerssen at the Amsterdam Conservatorium, …
The Bulletproof Musician
I have Ruth Brons (@things4strings on Twitter) to thank for a link to The Bulletproof Musician, a blog solely about sports psychology for musicians, from Dr Noa Kageyama. He suggests ways to develop courage and confidence, discusses mental practice, slow…
Playing Elgar – with Dr Christopher Kent
Elgar’s image-consciousness could put many modern celebs to shame. As photography got into its stride at the turn of the 19th century, he posed for the camera as the dapper country gent (above) or the distinguished composer about to dash…
Dame Gillian Weir
Do we like pictures of organists in gorgeous frocks and pretty shoes gracing the organ steps? Of course we do – I know Dame Gillian Weir has resisted, rightly, being styled as a lady organist, but the organ world desperately…
Playing Bach with Professor Peter Williams
Can you be in rapport with an eighteenth century German Lutheran? asked Professor Williams, at the beginning of his study day on Bach in Cambridge last Saturday. All playing is distortion of a kind he said – you are imposing…
Recent Comments