In the summer of 2022, James Lloyd Thomas set off for Nigeria.  He was following in the footsteps of other RCO tutors over the years, to spend a week with the organists and choristers in the Lagos cathedrals and churches, coaching them in the English cathedral traditions of organ-playing and singing.

A recorded conversation between RCO President David Hill and Dame Gillian Weir, originally presented during the Cambridge Summer Music Festival 2022.  Dame Gillian discusses her distinguished career as a concert organist and recording artist, illustrated with extracts from her various recordings. 

RCO Accredited Teacher, Anne Marsden Thomas, has curated a major new series of films for everyone involved in organ teaching. A summary of the series with links to all the films can be found here.

The music of the Northern European school explored on the instruments of its time, on a study trip to Denmark organised by the RCO.

Drew Cantrill Fenwick presents a film discussing the variety of skills needed to get the best out of singers in a choir, from warm-up exercises, help with note learning and interval recognition, and conducting techniques. 

William Saunders explains how to set up and run a workshop to introduce the organ to new players, with hints on planning, organisation, publicity, funding, and finding an audience for organ outreach events.

In this film, number 12 in the Teach the Organ Series, Anne Marsden Thomas offers a method for teaching sight-reading especially to beginner and elementary students.

Film 11 in Anne Marsden Thomas’s Teach the Organ series offers a method for teaching registration and organ management, especially to beginner and elementary students.

Samuel Kimuli, an organist, composer and educator now based in the UK, decided to start an Organ Academy in his home country of Uganda to help young musicians who did not have the same opportunities as he had. He tells StopPress how he came to play the organ, and his ambitions for The Organ Academy.