Joe McHardy was convinced he’d failed his FRCO earlier this year, so when he got emails telling him not only that he had passed, but been awarded the Durrant Prize, and then the John Birch Scholarship, he thought there must have been some mistake. He tells us what the Scholarship, and the RCO, have meant for him.

You can watch the College’s 2016 Conferment of Diplomas ceremony in full or as edited highlights.

Professor Peter Williams, Bach Scholar and a Vice President of the RCO, has passed away, appropriately around midnight just before Bach’s birthday, the 21st March. Official tributes will of course be paid elsewhere, but I would like to remember a study day which I attended as a very newbie organist, in which his sharp, questioning intelligence, combined with great authority, were powerfully in evidence.

RCO members, students and their families filled Southwark Cathedral on Saturday for the 2016 Conferment of Diplomas.

Famously prickly, irascible, caring and encouraging, Dr Bernard Rose was a one-off, and for over five decades a living legend in the UK’s choirmaster world.

The Conferment of Diplomas is the public centrepiece of the Royal College of Organists’ year. In 2015 it was held in Southwark Cathedral, London, and you can watch a video of the proceedings here.

The Conferment of Diplomas is the public centrepiece of the Royal College of Organists’ year. In 2013 it was held in Southwark Cathedral, London.

The Conferment of Diplomas is the public centrepiece of the Royal College of Organists’ year. In 2014 it was held in Southwark Cathedral, London.