Marking the 450th anniversary of Thomas Tomkins’s birth, John Caldwell investigates this ‘honest quiet peaceable man’ as one contemporaneous document characterised him. The focus of Caldwell’s study is the keyboard music, and not least how Tomkins reacted to the idioms and techniques he discovered in an important English sixteenth-century manuscript which came into his possession.

Terence Charlston looks at recent editions from the newly founded publisher Lyrebird Music.  In this review article he not only reacts to the editorial mission and accomplishment but also stimulates our engagement as keyboard players with the interpretative challenges of the virginalist repertoire.

There’s a powerful astrological theme to Martin Baker’s organ recital at St Michael’s Cornhill on Monday 13 March, as he gives the world premiere of Jonathan Hagger’s Great Conjunction Triptych: Seven Vignettes for Organ.

Woman Composer Sunday is on March 6 this year, and the American Guild of Organists have teamed up with the Society of Women Organists to create an inspirational repertoire list to help organists take up the challenge.

An exploration of the life and reputation of Dietrich Buxtehude, and his use of rhetorical structures and devices, using the Preludium in C as an example.

Tom Winpenny discusses the organ works of Judith Bingham, set for the FRCO examination written papers for 2021-2022.

James Mitchell plays his Festival Toccata, the winning entry in the under-25 years category in the RCO’s Composition Competition, held in 2020.

On Sunday 7 March, the eve of International Women’s Day, organists (and a few choirs too) took to social media to celebrate Woman Composer Sunday, a joint initiative by the Society of Women Organists and the RCO.  Organists were asked to perform a piece of music by a woman composer that day, and post it to Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. StopPress reports on the inspiring results.

An annual celebration of women composers has been launched by the Royal College of Organists and the Society of Women Organists. Sunday 7 March 2021 – the nearest Sunday to International Women’s Day on 8 March – will be celebrated as Woman Composer Sunday. Here on StopPress we have inspiration and wide-ranging resources for organists looking for repertoire by women composers.