The UK's leading Digital Church Organ specialist
A Viscount organ has been selected for one of this year’s BBC Proms concerts, not in London’s Royal Albert Hall, but in the North-East at the beautiful Glasshouse International Centre for Music, in Gateshead. On Saturday 26th July 2025, the Glasshouse will host BBC Proms: Bach and Mendelssohn, with a full symphony orchestra and chorus…
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My first visit to Southwell Minster was a surprise visit for my 50th birthday to play the Screen Organ there. My 40th birthday had seen a visit to Salisbury Cathedral and my 60th went unmarked, which must mean my 70th is coming up next year and must be a very auspicious venue indeed! Time will…
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Many readers of our blogs will be aware that we have a busy and growing business providing temporary digital organs for concerts and on a longer-term basis when churches and cathedrals have their pipe organs overhauled. We have provided organs all over the UK including York Minster and Canterbury Cathedral. Our partner retailer Jeffers Music…
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I am indebted to the Household Division web site for the information below which is a truncated version of their much fuller history. History of the Royal Military Chapel (Guards’ Chapel) The Royal Military Chapel, or the Guards’ Chapel as it is more generally known, stands in Birdcage Walk on the south side of St….
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Unusually on a Sunday morning I was sat at home close to my phone when a Facebook Message popped up from Jonathan Eyre (Chapel Organist at Old Royal Naval College) asking if we could provide a hire organ in the Chapel the next day. That might be challenge enough for most companies but the next…
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The ailing state of the large Compton Organ at Derby Cathedral is well known in the organ community and so readers will expect this blog to be about a hire triggered by the failure of this instrument. Many will be relieved to learn the Compton limps on and it was the failure of the Cousans…
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I am delighted to tell you that September 2019 saw the addition of this important place of worship to our list of prestigious organ hire clients. Its also amusing that it seems we are constantly bumping into staff from Harrison & Harrison as they strip out the pipe organ while we install our speakers. Not…
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On Tuesday July 9th 2019 we installed a hire organ in St George’s Cathedral Southwark. The 10th instrument currently on hire and for quite an unusual reason that I will explain below. The following day I went in with my new colleague Richard Goodall to check out the installation and carry out some basic voicing….
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It seems that the need for hire organs just keeps on growing as another ‘SOS’ request came in recently from St Martin’s Church Bladon. A call on a Thursday needed an organ installed the next day for a wedding on Saturday following the pipe organ blower failure. Bladon at least is quite close also being…
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I think there is little doubt that we can claim to be the leading UK company in the Church Organ hire and rental market. Our organ hire installations are substantial and numerous – some of which you can find in this blog section. We also pride ourselves on working hard at short notice to ensure…
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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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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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This is a post written by David Jeffers of Jeffers Music, our Viscount Organ dealer based in Ireland. He had a very exciting client story to share, so we’ve asked him to write this post for us. In Philadelphia back in August 2015 Pope Francis announced that the next World Meeting of Families, a Roman…
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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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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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Not since I was in school in Somerset have I set foot in Wells Cathedral which I hate to consider let alone write was 44 years ago. In those days my organ tutor David Ponsford was the assistant at Wells Cathedral and so I managed to get an hour or so at the organ console…
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As our hire business grows and we are involved in more long term installations, we are increasingly finding that we are working at considerable heights. This was the case with the organ installation at Tewkesbury Abbey where work on the pipe organ is scheduled to last for about 4 months. The work involved there is…
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In October this year I found myself for the first time visiting St Mary’s Melton Mowbray. My only knowledge of this church was as a venue where Carlo Curley often played organ battles with his touring organ set up in the nave. Carlo lived nearby and so was a regular visitor. An Organ just in…
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Recently we supplied a hire instrument to St John’s Berkswell to cover the renovation of their Willis pipe organ and the discovery of this small Warwickshire church was a revelation in more ways than one. I will write up in detail information on the hire later including a lot of images of the very fine…
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Viscount recently provided a digital organ for hire to the Hull Minster while the building is undergoing a major programme of renovation. I am afraid to admit that until we were recently approached by Minster Organist Mark Keith I was not aware of the splendid church that must be the crown jewel of the City’s heritage….
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Those of you familiar with St John’s Smiths Square or steeped in knowledge of the pipe organs of the British Isles will know that SJSS has a very fine Klais pipe organ and so should not be in need of a hire organ. However, things do not always go to plan and so it was…
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As ever, we do enjoy a challenge and generally it comes in the direction of SOS organ hires. We received a call from James Thomas the Director of Music at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. He was up against it and at very short notice needed to hire an organ for an event in the choir school which…
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The Church of St Bride’s is justly world famous. With 2000 years history of worship on the site today’s landmark building was the invention of Christopher Wren famous for so many of London’s churches including of course St Paul’s Cathedral. An earlier building destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666 followed a succession of churches that…
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