After the fire at Notre Dame, it was a relief to see images of Notre-Dame’s Cavaillé-Coll organ seemingly intact, and millions of euros have been pledged already for restoration of the Cathedral, and presumably, the organ. There are other Cavaillé-Coll instruments in France deserving of restoration though, and film-maker Will Fraser has devised a way we can all help bring back to life a particularly good example of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll’s artistry.

The RCO’s Wingfield Organ is now in residence at St Mary’s Church in Fotheringhay – all very appropriate, as both instrument and church are fascinating medieval survivors. Fotheringhay will be the setting for a special concert on Saturday 25 May exploring the vocal and organ music of late medieval England, with David Skinner and The Alamire Scholars, organist James Parsons, and historian Dr David Starkey providing the spoken narrative.

A project to engage young children with the pipe organ heritage of the Netherlands has created a global network of organisations allowing children to build and play a two-octave mechanical action organ. The original organ design by Wim Janssens is now being reproduced by professional organ builders in the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, Sweden, and now the UK, as part of the Orgelkids project world-wide.

The 2019 East of England Organ Day celebrates the world of film in May, with concerts of cinematic repertoire for the organ, and improvisations, featuring the majestic 1933 Grand Organ in the Chapel of the Royal Hospital School, Holbrook, in Suffolk. School organist David Pickthall will create live, spontaneous soundtracks at the piano to two short Harold Lloyd films – here he explains the techniques that both pianists and organists can use to improvise to live films.

Organists here in the UK have their worries, but coping with the effect of a 6.3 earthquake on their livelihoods isn’t one of them. The earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2010 and 2011 damaged and destroyed many churches and pipe organs. But some, due to both circumstances and craftsmanship, survived, and in 2018 they are beginning to be heard again.

The restoration of the organ at Canterbury Cathedral has begun, with some radical changes to the position of the pipework and console. Harrison & Harrison are working on the creation of new pipework in their Durham workshops, while Viscount Organs discuss the challenges of providing a digital replacement to maintain the musical life of the Cathedral for the next two years.

Those of us who attended the RCO/Cinema Organ Society Organ Day at the Troxy Cinema in London’s East End last January are aware of the skills of organists like Richard Hills FRCO – equally at home on the classical as well as the cinema organ. Now, a year on, another celebrated classical organist will step up to the Troxy Wurlitzer – Thomas Trotter gives his first concert on the cinema organ this coming January, in the company of Simon Gledhill. We look at the legacy of other crossover artists in the organ world.

In the first of three films from RCO Organ Forum: The Organist Entertains, Richard Hills introduces us to the building and the history of its organ, and is joined by Simon Gledhill for a rank-by-rank demonstration.

In the second of three films from RCO Organ Forum: The Organist Entertains, Ian Bell describes the theatre organ aesthetic from an organ building perspective.