The Royal College of Organists marked the 100th birthday of Dr Francis Jackson CBE a couple of weeks ago with a special event in conjunction with York Minster, where Dr Jackson directed the music with great distinction for 36 years. Guests included the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, and Katharine, Duchess of Kent, and tributes to Jackson as organist, choral director and composer, came from around the world.

The Father Willis at the Union Chapel in Islington, North London, will be centre stage in a three-day event next week, as Organ Reframed challenges artists and audiences to rethink the organ. The festival, from 13th to 15th October 2017, features eight new commissions, and rare performances from musicians and artists from the UK, US and Canada.

Sebastian Heindl, aged 19, has won the Senior section of the Northern Ireland International Organ Competition (NIIOC), which took place in August on the Walker organ in St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, Armagh. Applications for the competition, for organists aged 21 and under, were received from Hong Kong, China, France, Germany, Poland, Budapest, Slovakia, Lithuania, Canada, UK and Ireland. RCO Student Members were among the prize-winners: Thomas Trotter comments on the experience of chairing the competition jury.

See you again next year! was the verdict of many students on two of the RCO’s flagship courses – The Organ Scholar Experience, this year based around the colleges and organs of Oxford, and the Summer Course, with over fifty organists rushing from their base in St Giles, Cripplegate around the City of London’s churches, for classes, private practice, and performance.

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.

This film helps the candidate through the entry process for The RCO Certificate of Accredited Membership (CAM), and looks at what to consider when choosing repertoire to play.    

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.