Privileged access to historic places and instruments is a feature of RCO courses and classes, but it doesn’t get much better than sitting at the sky-blue and gold organ of the Royal Chapel at Versailles. Eleven organists visited Paris to play the Classical French repertoire on instruments of the period on an RCO study trip in June this year, under the tutelage of the organist at the Royal Chapel, Jean-Baptiste Robin.

It’s not uncommon for professional musicians to also maintain a job in a non-musical field, but Paul Griffiths, spectacularly, holds one of the top positions in the aviation industry, as well as being an international concert organist and recitalist, and a Vice President of the RCO. With a recital at Westminster Abbey coming up on 13th August, he describes his practice routine, and how important both his occupations are.

The RCO’s Organ Scholar Experience is the essential summer course for young organists. Held in Oxford this year, from 18th to 23rd July, it introduces teenage organists to the life of an organ scholar. Come and listen to choral evensong and choral compline in Oxford Colleges taken by the course students, and recitals from the top-flight recitalists who are their tutors for the week.

“500 uploads on YouTube!” tweeted the Archive of Recorded Church Music, triumphantly, last week. Colin Brownlee who runs the archive has been gathering recordings – LPs, 78s, cassettes, reel-to-reel, CDs, commercial and private – for 15 years, and has created a collection of cathedral and church choral music which is now seen as definitive, illustrating the changes in choral sound since 1902.

Two European cities hold festivals devoted to the organ and its music this summer – each basing their festival around a major organ-playing competition. Catch up with the celebrations around the instrument, in England and in France.

Opportunities to hear the organ uninterrupted on UK network radio are few. But did you know that if you transfer to pure internet radio, there’s a wealth of sources dedicated to quality organ music out there? All it needs is a computer, smartphone or tablet with an internet connection and speakers, plus a slight change of approach and listening habits.

For teachers of all keyboard instruments, it can be an uphill task to find teaching material for keyboard skills – realising figured bass, score reading, transposing, harmonising and improvisation. Two books of graded exercises have just been published by RCO tutors Anne Marsden Thomas and Frederick Stocken to help students of every standard improve their keyboard skills.

Playing hymns is an essential part of the musical lives of most organists. The hymn is a resilient art form, and has survived into the twenty-first century, with twenty-first century resources to match. Here’s a guide to some of them.

The Bristol and District Organists’ Association thinks they may have qualified for the Guinness Book of Records this month, with a unique public concert of 16 previously unheard organ compositions. The occasion was the finals of their competition for new compositions for the organ, to find a piece that was approachable, could be used as service voluntary, and also within recital repertoire.