The UK's leading Digital Church Organ specialist
With our offices unusually quiet again in the second lockdown I resorted to exploring YouTube for material to pass some time. I also wanted to find a film clip I remember from the 1990’s of a remarkable home organ in the USA which I saw on one of the series ‘Howard Goodall’s Organworks’ Not all…
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From time to time when we receive a used organ, it comes with a ‘stash’ of it’s previous owner’s sheet music. These are more often than not sad acquisitions, as the music belonged to the musician who has died and there is no family member who wants or can use the library that has been…
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Are you looking for organ music for Christmas? Here is a list of our favourite Christmas music for the organ. If you are a church musician (particularly if you are an organist), you’ll know that there is one liturgical season where it’s easy to choose the music, and that is Christmas. There is a treasure…
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Last Saturday I dropped my phone and smashed the screen. So careless of me but as the phone was 6 years old I was pretty philosophical about it as a trigger to get the latest all singing and dancing iPhone Apple had to offer. By mid-Monday after about 4 calls with my network provider, each…
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There are very few bonuses flowing from this pandemic in the world of performing arts. So it has been a very welcome sight to see many performers grasp the opportunities the internet provides using social media to present music to us while our concert halls and churches are closed. It’s probably fair to say that…
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Ever since I was a very young child I have gone to bed with a radio on all night at low level. In the beginning this was a tiny Perdio Radio that I would take under the covers so my parents in a nearby room were not aware I was still awake. Eventually of course…
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Those of you who are regular readers of our blog posts may remember an earlier story about young Leicestershire organist Dominic Remedios. He was keen to try for a Cambridge organ scholarship but desperately needed an instrument to practise on at home. Always keen to help young organists progress with their studies, we agreed a…
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In recent weeks and months there have been few opportunities for us to go out and gather information and stories of general interest. So it was a pleasure to be able to respond to a request for help from Ian Higginson. I’m struck by the contrast between social media and what I shall describe as…
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The COVID-19 Pandemic has had a huge impact on the lives of musicians. Their opportunities to play instruments dropped significantly with the closure of churches and schools, but also in all paid-playing opportunities for events being stopped almost overnight What we had to consider With the lockdown, and then the announcement of stage easing of…
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As I am a child of the 1960’s (born 1955), you might reasonably expect that I spent my teenage years listening to the music of the major bands of those days. Perhaps ‘The Beatles’ would be considered the highest profile, but it was also the time of Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, the Who. In…
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To try and answer this question and figure out how Bach might have regarded a modern, digital organ, we need to try to understand the man’s personality and get into his head. By all accounts Bach: Got into at least one knife fight with a bassoonist, after calling said bassoonist an ugly name Spent time…
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From time to time I am extraordinarily flattered to receive personal emails in reply to our regular monthly newsletters. If you are one of our newsletter subscribers (Subscribe here, if you haven’t already), you will already know that we work hard to fill them with juicy, interesting information based on musical interests, stories about the…
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The Royal College of Organists (RCO) has generously made its considerable library of online video tutorial material available for free during the ‘lockdown’. If you care to take a look, it is extensive and of course of very good quality as you would expect. iRCO is the RCO’s virtual campus – an online environment where…
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A message from our MD, David Mason We are ready to open up our showroom to customers and wish to provide you with some information about how we aim to do this in a way that is safe for you to visit and, in time, for our staff to return to work. We know how…
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There can be few better known organists faces on the highways and by ways of the internet than Kevin Bowyer’s. He is often seen with his characteristic smiling face ‘beaming’ at the virtual audience. I first met Kevin in about 2003. He came to my home to offer guidance and advice to a young St…
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Your chance to win a pair of brand new Viscount VHD-1000 headphones! All you need to do is to answer the questions below correctly and you’ll be entered into the draw. To enter the competition please first read the rules and then proceed to answering the questions below. Remember to fill in your contact details…
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Following on from David’s Desert Island Discs for organ players – I thought I would add to the theme. We had a great discussion about it and thought: how would we fill our time if we had to isolate ourselves (Coronavirus style) on a desert island. This led to some interesting answers and I think…
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I set off early on the morning of Saturday January 25 to drive to Cardiff. I was the ‘guest speaker’ at the South East Wales Organists’ Associations annual lunch at the Radisson Blu Hotel. Born in Wales and until 7 years ago with a parent still living in Cardiff, this was a drive the car…
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2019 was a momentous year and as I sit typing this account, I am not quite sure where to put the emphasis. The beginning of the year was understandably focussed on some staff changes. Our new sales manager Richard Patt had just joined and we were also making plans for long term friend and colleague…
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I was delighted to receive an invitation to attend a gathering of organ and church music enthusiasts for a special evensong service at the Chapel Royal St James’s Palace in November. I had been there many years before when Joseph Nolan was playing for a BBC 3 broadcast evensong to act as page turner. Unexpectedly…
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David has kindly asked me to introduce myself as the new part-time member of staff based at our Bicester office. Most of my career has been spent in the musical instruments industry, although for five years during the 1990s I worked in the publications department of the Royal School of Church Music, located in the…
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Earlier this year we wrote about how RTE in Ireland televise a religious service every Sunday morning. This is normally recorded in a TV studio in Dublin but there is also an outside broadcast from some church around Ireland. Generally a Yamaha grand piano is used in the studio, or the musicians bring in their…
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I was recently in Manchester for the launch concert of a Theatre Organ project I am involved with and I met Ian Wolstenholme who introduced me to an interesting programme he produces on a monthly basis for Oldham Community Radio. The programme Community Keyboards covers all aspects of the organ world from Theatre to Classical…
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If you are a regular viewer of our video publications you will almost certainly be familiar with our colleague Francis Rumsey. He is a key member of the part time team both in front of and behind the camera. Francis is organist of St Mary’s Church Witney where we have made some of our video…
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