The UK's leading Digital Church Organ specialist
Welcome to the first of five videos in our Organ Registration Tutorial Series for 2019! In this first tutorial we’ve chosen to discuss two contrasting chorale preludes by J. S. Bach – Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (BWV 639) and the Trio on Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend (BWV 655). In…
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About five years ago John became involved with the music and musicians in Durban, South Africa. The first person he met was Pinkie Mtshali who is Director of Music in Emmanuel Roman Catholic Cathedral. She introduced him to many top-class musicians including Melvin Peters who is organist and choir master of Saint Paul’s Anglican Church…
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About a year ago now I learnt that Miller’s Music of Cambridge had provided a Cadet Compact 31 which was installed in the rooms of the senior organ scholar. I was aware that many college organ scholars often had a piano in their rooms and had wondered why none (to my knowledge) at either Oxford…
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James Parsons (founder of Oundle for Organists) and The Organ Club invites you to join them for the 2019 Ushaw Organ Weekend (second time it’s organised). This event is hosted at Ushaw College (5 miles from Durham) from Friday 31st May to Sunday 2nd June 2019. This is an opportunity for organists of all ages…
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Early last December we published what turned out to be our most far reaching Facebook Post ever. We were trying to find a new home for a very pretty little pipe organ about to be ejected from a Methodist Chapel that was in the process of conversion into flats (see a picture at the bottom…
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In the Organ Registration Tutorial Series Francis Rumsey and Jonathan Kingston discuss and demonstrate approaches to registration for distinctive genres and styles of organ music. The aim is to give you some ideas about stop combinations that might be appropriate, and tips about handling some of the organ management challenges. As will always be the…
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I am sure we all have stories of strange and unusual items we have seen in the organ lofts we visit. Perhaps you will be able to add to these stories for me? I will always remember the loft at St Johns College Cambridge where on reaching the top step I bent down to pick…
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For the second time in recent years we are providing a hire instrument for the magnificent St Bride’s Church in London. Last time the pipe organ was decommissioned while the church was redecorated. This occasion is far more serious as the Compton pipe organ is now silent following a massive lightening strike that destroyed quite…
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I thought you might like to read an update on the instrument installed in 2011 at St Augustine’s Church. New place for the organ console and speakers The church closed in 2017 for a major refurbishment and redecoration which was completed earlier this year. We removed the instrument and took it into storage while the…
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What I hear you ask is unusual about an organ in a loft. That’s where you would expect to find the console. In fact I think most organists if asked, would they prefer to be on the floor of the church or tucked away out of sight in the private world of a loft would…
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Gosh what a year! It is hard to know quite where to begin to share with you how much has happened in 2018. It is absolutely true that if you asked a group of organists to express their opinions on the sound of various instruments pipe and digital there would be a great spread of…
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It is almost 8 years now since we introduced the instruments based on Viscount’s unique software-based sound engine platform ‘Physis’. We launched the instruments with version 1.04 of the software and we have had 11 revisions with version 1.14.19 being the current edition as of December 2022 . Upgraded your Envoy, Regent or Sonus instrument…
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Back in the mid 2000’s before the financial crisis turned the world on its head I used to enjoy a monthly trip into London for lessons with Catherine Ennis at her wonderful church in the heart of the City of London. It was a most enjoyable ‘day off’ and a visit that I always looked…
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In 2018 we’ve added six more videos to our organ music library. These new choral organ accompaniment tutorial videos focus on works suitable for choir and organ. Combined with our Hymn of the Month posts, we now have 24 well known tunes in our library of organ music, for you to refer to for organ…
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On a lovely April spring day, we had exclusive use of St Kenelm’s Church Enstone to film a much more detailed presentation of our popular Envoy 35-F church and home practice instrument. The particular model we used having been ‘upgraded’ to provide sub and super swell octave couplers. Francis Rumsey in charge As ever the…
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Welcome to the sixth and final release in the Choral Organ Accompaniment series. Sussex Carol speaks “Christmas” from its first notes, it being well known as one of the mainstays of the traditional Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve. For our 2018 tutorial series we’re concentrating on the…
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It was almost exactly a year ago that we had a call out of the blue from Richard Apperley and Michael Stewart who were in the UK to find a supplier of a large digital instrument for Wellington Cathedral in New Zealand. Their fine pipe organ had been destroyed by an earthquake late in 2016…
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On my way to New Zealand to install our largest yet Regent Classic Custom Organ I travelled via Hong Kong to meet some very accomplished organists there who have over time become ‘email friends’ and very occasional customers. This was a whistle stop visit with only 2 nights spent in Hong Kong but as luck…
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I do not expect that many of us will have a clear memory of the first organ we ever heard, or perhaps even played. I can be fairly certain that for me it will have been the Llandaff Cathedral instrument sometime in 1960, as from the age of 5 I was a pupil at the…
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I was in the Minster twice last year. First in May for a delightful hour or so locked in alone with the Minster pipe organ and then in October to join a group celebrating the 100th birthday of former Minster organist Francis Jackson. Had I known at the time that we would be providing 2…
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Our fifth release in the Choral Accompaniment series is the delightful anthem “Thou visitest the earth” by Maurice Greene. For our 2018 tutorial series we’re concentrating on the organ as a means of choral accompaniment. Church choral music was chosen to illustrate the accompaniment of various parts of the liturgy and to highlight some well-known…
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Over the weekend of 7-9 September about 10,000 people gathered in Liverpool for the largest Catholic procession in the UK since the late Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1982. They were attending the first National Eucharistic Congress in the country since 1908. The Catholic Church holds a Eucharistic Congress every three or four years…
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It has been a very demanding year for organ hires. In fact the demand seems to have no end in sight with two more just booked for September to cover pipe organ rebuilds in London and Bromley. From this insight into the ‘pipe organ world’ I would say that the work out there has never…
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Welcome to our fourth release of the Choral Accompaniment series which is a setting of Psalm 20, to an Anglican chant by Gerald Knight. For our 2018 tutorial series we’re concentrating on the organ as a means of choral accompaniment. Church choral music was chosen to illustrate the accompaniment of various parts of the liturgy…
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