Cradlehall School in Inverness recently took delivery of a digital organ through the RCO’s Organs in Schools scheme. Inverness Cathedral organist Adrian Marple describes the enthusiasm for organ-playing that has developed, and how he began teaching the organ to youngsters in the first place.

Madeline Smith returns from the American Guild of Organists’ National Convention in Missouri with a sense of great optimism for the future of our instrument.

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 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.

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.

Ethel Smyth’s organ works form a small part of her list of compositions, but still reflect many facets of her life. Richard Moore analyses the sources and structures in Smyth’s organ compositions in relation to her social and professional relationships, and examines the influence of Bach, Brahms and Reger on her writing.

A gallery of pictures from the College’s annual Conferment Ceremony at Southwark Cathedral on Saturday 7 March, at which RCO President Sarah MacDonald presented successful examination candidates with their awards and diplomas, and also presented three RCO Medals.