St Mary’s Nottingham September 2014

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St Mary’s is a very large Grade I listed early-fifteenth century building in the Lace Market  area of Nottingham. This is a church of ‘cathedral proportions’ with seating for  up to 700 people. Just over 40 years ago a brave or controversial decision was taken to install a small continental style pipe organ by Marcussen, quite unlike any instrument you might expect to find in a large English Church.

This pipe organ has always lacked the scale to support a full church and indeed much of the colour range to accompany the core liturgical music programme of the great choral tradition. The organist is also very remote from the choir with almost no direct view of the conductor. The solution to this problem has now been provided with our Regent 356 which has been placed in the building on 17 speakers with antiphonal departments that enable the sound to fill the building in a way that has not been heard there for many years.

A delighted director of music John Keys can now provide a far greater range of music in the church which already has a strong choral tradition and excellent choir. We are delighted with the reaction from the congregation which can generally be summed up by the following quotation ‘At last, St Mary’s has an instrument with appropriate dignity and gravitas’.

You can see John Keys playing the Prelude on the chorale “Vater unser im Himmelreich” by Georg Boehm on our instrument at St Mary’s, Nottingham below.