Five questions for…Carol Williams
Dr Carol Williams was British born, in a musical Welsh family, and was giving recitals by the time she was eight. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music, then with Daniel Roth at St Sulpice, Paris, before moving to…
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…Catherine Ennis
Catherine Ennis takes up her post as President of the Royal College of Organists in the UK in its 150th anniversary year. This is highly appropriate, as she was one of the guiding lights behind the evolution of the RCO…
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…
Carl Hemann, neglected Yorkshire composer – free download!
I wear this distinguished connection lightly, but I am in fact the great-grand-niece of Carl Hemann – ‘Barnsley’s leading composer of music’ according to his obituary in the Barnsley Chronicle of January 1930*. A church organist all his life, his real…
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, …
Five questions for…Anne Page
Born in Perth, Australia, Anne Page studied with Marie Claire-Alain in France, and with Peter Hurford in Cambridge – teaching as his deputy at the Royal Academy of Music for several years. She made her London debut at the Royal…
Cherry Wainer with Don Storer
Every time I visit YouTube for worthy exponents of the classical organ repertoire, I get sidetracked. Here’s the best organist with a poodle on the bench ever – Cherry Wainer. Cherry was very busy in the 50s and 60s, and…
Jane Watts
I foolishly passed up an opportunity in February to hear Jane Watts in London, and now I’m kicking myself, after listening to her on Spotify. Her technique is so fluent that nothing gets in the way of the music, which…
Marjorie Meinert
Thank you Kayla, for pointing me towards a theater organ site that’s given me another US organist to consider – Marjorie Meinert. A big-timer on US radio and TV in the 40s and 50s, at the height of her career…
Barbara Dennerlein – hot stuff on the Hammond B-3
I am no expert on jazz, and and couldn’t for the life of me tell post-bop from hard bop, but I have huge admiration for what Barbara Dennerlein has done for the organ. For starters, Barbara has revived the legendary…
Marie-Claire Alain – Maitresse de l’orgue
The death has just been announced of Marie-Claire Alain at the age of 86. She came from a distinguished musical family, whose friends, associates and teachers included just about everyone of musical importance in France at the time. Her brother,…
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