We are recording our current series of live webinars on harmony for the RCO examination written papers, so they can be viewed on iRCO.  This month’s Learning during Lockdown suggests how you could use these, and other resources, to start or continue your studies of harmony, depending on your existing knowledge.   We also introduce live looping, an improvisatory technique from the world of electronic music, which can be creatively applied to the organ.

Pam Hulme introduces live looping as part of the organists’ toolkit, in a film recorded on the organ of the Pfingstkirche, Berlin.

The British organ world of the 1960s was shaken up by a generation of new, iconoclastic composers, and James Parsons leads an RCO class exploring this music in Newcastle, this October, on the Kenneth Tickell organ at St Mary’s RC Cathedral. If you think this music is difficult and daunting, think again – James has approachable and engaging suggestions of repertoire for the class for you to explore.

Art Night is a free, contemporary art festival, taking place over one night, once a year, in a different area of London.  This year the festival is on the night of Saturday 22nd June, in Walthamstow and King’s Cross in North London. Cory Archangel and Hampus Lindwall have been invited to create an event for the festival based around the organ at the church of St Mary, in Walthamstow.

The powerfully Gothic surroundings of James Cubitt’s Union Chapel in north London are the setting for the third Organ Reframed this October, where the 1877 Henry Willis organ will star in a festival designed to introduce new artists and new audiences to its versatility. Booking has opened for the only event of its kind in the UK: Organ Reframed focuses on commissioning new music from composers at the contemporary cutting edge to firmly embed a 19th century instrument in the music of the 21st century.

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.

Philip Moore’s new Requiem will be given its world premiere on Friday 18 November 2016 at 2pm at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge in a concert to be given by the BBC Singers, conducted by David Hill. The concert will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Dedicated to the memory of his Mother and Father, Philip Moore’s Requiem is written for soprano solo, mixed voices and organ.

by Morwenna Brett As the RCO has said many times before, no other instrument seems quite able to embrace and sum up the public mood like the organ.  At moments of high emotion, whether personal or public, the organ speaks in a way few instruments can. The death of David Bowie on Sunday 10th January saddened […]

Stephen Farr discusses Helga Schauerte-Maubouet’s edition of Jehan Alain’s organ works for Barenreiter, and asks to what extent it represents an advance on previous published versions of the scores, and whether it resolves the fundamental problems of the source material for Alain’s music.   RCO Journal 2012_Farr