A comprehensive guide to the RCO Diploma examinations from the prospective candidate’s point of view. 

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

The RCO’s first-ever Winter Conference this February was devised as the pandemic lockdown continued to prove a barrier to organists and organ enthusiasts getting together in person.  RCO Director Simon Williams decided to build on the experience through 2020 of putting all the major RCO courses online, with a new format – a complete virtual conference, with seminars, presentations, recitals, a keynote speech and a trade show. Over 200 people attended the three day event, including StopPress Editor, Morwenna Campbell-Smith, who writes this report.

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.

Details about online access to The American Organist journal, for RCO Members who are Affiliate Members of the AGO.

The January 2021 edition of the College’s bi-annual magazine can be downloaded by Members here in pdf format.

Katherine Dienes-Williams, a Trustee of the RCO and also Organist and Master of the Choristers at Guildford Cathedral, hears from RCO Members about how playing the organ has changed their lives, and what membership of the RCO has meant to them.

Sir Andrew Parmley, Chief Executive of the RCO, describes how Richard Limpus’ vision in 1860 of a college to raise the professional standing of the organist has been fulfilled today, in ways that he never could have imagined. 

The College has just announced a new reciprocal agreement with colleagues in the American Guild of Organists, which allows members of either organisation to join the other as affiliate members, and benefit from a range of perks.  We look at the AGO and what it can offer RCO Members, and at other American resources that might be of interest.