A Yorkshire organist is preparing to walk over 100 miles across the county, while giving a series of organ recitals, in order to support the next generation of young singers at Leeds Minster.

The College’s bi-annual magazine for members contains features, details of forthcoming events and courses, and general news and views from the RCO.

The RCO recognises the success of a unique yearly event: Bachhaus, a day workshop on the music of Bach based around a fine 1994 William Drake house organ in Hertfordshire.

Joseph Jacob was born in Uyo, in southern Nigeria, and is currently on a Masters degree course at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. His studies are being funded by various foundations, including the RCO.  We asked him to describe his early training as a musician in his home country, and what he hopes to achieve as an organist in the future.

The Fantazia of foure parts is one of the best-known and most-often performed of Orlando Gibbons’s keyboard works. Desmond Hunter looks at Gibbons’s structuring of his large-scale fantasias, and how the qualities of these works can be brought out in performance.

Jeremiah Stephenson explores the art of choral accompaniment in depth with the aim of providing a framework for you to make your own judgements, and a stimulus to explore fully the possibilities that each organ provides for imaginative accompaniment.

Roger Judd reflects on Sir Frederick Ouseley’s profound and lasting effect on the musical life of England, both practical and academic. The article is an edited version of a lecture given at the Hereford Three Choirs Festival in July 2025 to mark the bicentenary of Ouseley’s birth.

David Baker looks at how the organ’s importance grew with the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century, not primarily as a solo instrument, but as a means to make worship dignified and expressive.

You can watch the College’s 2026 Conferment of Diplomas Ceremony here in full, or as edited highlights, and listen to the Ede & Ravenscroft recital given by international concert organist Katelyn Emerson.