Meet Cassian Southwick: Another team member with a longstanding passion for organs

Hello, I’m Cassian Southwick, the newest member of the Viscount Classical Organs team.

I’d like to thank David for asking me to introduce myself to you all. I’ve written from the beginning of my love of organs, all the way to the present day.

A young enthusiastic musician

It took me a little while longer than some to come round to the delights of organ playing, although being a small child at the time, I realise now I picked up the instrument about as soon as I could physically reach the pedals!

I started as a reasonably reluctant pianist, spending much of my time attempting to play music far beyond my capacity, then suddenly finding out about the organ and being utterly transfixed by it.

Ruth Norsworthy, of Steen’s Bridge, Herefordshire, was a family friend who had recently built the most magnificent 9-stop organ in her barn. I am quite happy to say that the experience of going to play it sparked a life-long interest in the instrument, both as a player and as someone extremely fascinated by their construction and history!

Playing at my first church

I found myself playing the organ at my first church at about 11 years old. It was St John the Baptist in Mamble – if you’re interested, like me, you can view the NPOR specification. I would take any new music I had learned to play after their Sunday services – I quite vividly remember attempting to play BWV 565 there; for the poor instrument it must have felt like being rudely awoken from a long sleep by a small, overexcited child.

It was a very rewarding experience for having trudged along country lanes, often at slightly anti-social times of day, and despite being a small and under-winded instrument, laid the foundations to take my delight for the instrument further.

Enjoying all types of organs in different locations

I found myself playing occasional services at Christmas for the different churches. Finding out that organs were so different from location to location was a great surprise to a teenager that didn’t go to church all that often.

So, you can imagine my delight when I was invited to play the enormous four-manual instrument at St Michael’s, Tenbury. I remember being completely overwhelmed by the host of colourful flues and powerful, dramatic reeds, and presume I ended up making rather a hash of the piece in performance, but again; another stepping stone.

Moving into competitions and recitals

My first substantial experience of a digital organ was in St Anne’s, Bewdley, where I spent a few afternoons playing in the run-up to a young musicians’ competition, in which the classical performance ended up being thoroughly out of place, but nonetheless gathered me a 2^nd place.

For a small church, however, it seemed magnificent to have such a range of available stops and playing aids, especially when I thought back to the tracker at St Michael’s Witley, it never really dawned on me until quite a long while later how St Anne’s retained the gift of music long after the pipe organ itself had failed.

From student to organ scholar

After school, I took up two positions of Organ Scholar, one at St George’s Cathedral, Southwark, and another at Hereford Cathedral.

They included my first real experience of professionally conducting a choir and raised the bar quite substantially for my musicianship.

I gained a huge amount of experience and found myself practising more and more.

Covid restrictions didn’t hamper all the joy

Sadly, COVID restrictions meant we lost many of the finer events of the two years, but we were lucky in that some of the main services still went ahead in some regard.

And happily, by the time it came round to the summer of 2021, the restrictions had lifted enough that I got the full benefit of the Three Choirs Festival that year in Worcester, singing in their Festival Chorus and Youth Choir.

Moving up north to Durham

Moving up to Durham in late December of 2021, I immediately reached out to the local churches to see if they were in need of organists, and soon found myself playing regularly at St John’s, Brandon and an ancient church in the centre of Durham, St Margaret of Antioch both having fine, colourful Harrison & Harrison organs.

I was invited to play weekly at the latter for the choir of St Cuthbert’s Society, where my then-fiancé was director. There I got to accompany a host of more unusual repertoire, as we aimed to promote marginalised composers’ music as much as possible, and even took some of it to occasional services at Durham Cathedral!

In April 2023 I got married at St Margaret’s on a fine, sunny day, with the privilege of a fine organ and choir to accompany the ceremony.

A dream position I couldn’t miss

With Harrison and Harrison being based nearby, I saw an opportunity I couldn’t miss and applied to work with them, doing my first bits of work in February 2022 on the restoration of the Walker organ from Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral – which at the time seemed incredibly daunting!

I quickly developed a niche working on organ electrics, and during my time working there built electric systems and cables for Norwich Cathedral, Bristol Beacon, the Guards’ Chapel, St Mary’s, Bathwick, and Rossall School.

Visiting these grand buildings for installations and repairs was a particular highlight, as well as working alongside the kind and knowledgeable staff, who must have some of the rarest skills in all of England!

I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about me.

I have some more blog posts in the works that I’ll be sharing in the coming weeks, including my time as an Organ Scholar, and some of the interesting instruments I have been lucky enough to play, keep an eye out for them.

It would be great to hear from you if you have any questions about how got into organs or some of the instruments I have played.