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andrewm

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Everything posted by andrewm

  1. In relation to both this and the post above it regarding a new ADoM at Llandaff, it seems that things are looking more optimistic there with the announcement of a new Chapter Clerk/Chief Executive who describes himself as being "a cathedral musician full and part-time since the age of 8"
  2. This looks like an excellent appointment, a very talented musician and organist.
  3. I did mean to share a recollection when I first saw this news but time ran away with me. Richard Lloyd was my Grade 8 piano examiner so I only met him for the short duration of that exam and from what I remember he was very pleasant and I thought very fair as an examiner. Nothing particularly memorable about this part of the story but more the events leading up to my exam. I was a songman at Beverley Minster at the time and Alan Spedding, who also sadly died just a few years ago) was my choirmaster and also organ teacher. His wife was my piano teacher and dragged me and my minimal practice regime to the point where I was just about ready for the exam. In the run up to the exam she persuaded Alan, who was also an ABRSM examiner, to do a mock exam with her three grade 8 candidates. My Bach Gigue was not quite up to scratch but I could just about get through it at a very steady tempo. In his feedback Alan totally approved of my tempo much to his wife's disgust and the comment was made that only an organist would think that tempo was appropriate. Anyway after my last lesson before the exam I still hadn't quite got the tempo up and the comment was made again that I would only pass that piece if the examiner was another organist....well fate dealt me a kind blow when I walked into the exam room and I realised who my examiner was! I did in fact pass that piece and the whole exam with very positive comments about the tempo of my Bach!!
  4. Good to see things are on a more stable footing again at Llandaff https://www.llandaffcathedral.org.uk/work-with-us/
  5. Yes definitely St Edmundsbury. If you watch any of William Saunders’ videos from there you can see the console is the same (the clue to me was the stuck on notice below the stops of the right hand jamb.
  6. The advert for the Bangor post doesn’t tell you much and there’s nothing on their website. Is it full/part time, salary, services per week.
  7. There's a fabulous recording from Everingham called Handel to Wesley recorded by Alan Spedding in 2004 http://www.amphion-recordings.com/phicd211.html A search on NPOR lists three organs in the village which must be a record for a village with a population of just 300 (can anyone else find a larger number of organs per head of population.....I know the nearby town of Beverley is supposed to have the highest number of pubs per head, I should know I used to drink in most of them). The Allen organ is in a private RC chapel but there is also the parish church and a private residence called the Coffee House in the village which as far as I can make out is the house of John Scott Whitely.
  8. Master of the Music job at Westminster Cathedral has now been advertised: https://jobs.churchtimes.co.uk/jobs/Master-of-Music-in-London-and-Home-Counties-jn8906
  9. Try a search for "composer anniversaries" and that brings up a good few sources: https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/ChoralWiki:2021_Anniversaries https://soclassiq.com/en/commemorations/Classical_music_history_%3A_2021_(Commemorations)/yy/2021/ https://www.ricordi.com/en-US/Composers/Anniversaries/Anniversaries-2021.aspx These are the first three results but there are many others. These tend to have just significant anniversaries but it's a good starting place and in the past I've tended to make a note of those composers of choral and organ music and make a conscious effort to include some of their works in my programming for the year.
  10. Another thought, simply because the composers were Scottish based would be pieces by Leighton or Hollins.
  11. Two very straightforward pieces I’ve used before are James MacMillan’s White Note Paraphrase and then I have a guitar arrangement of Maxwell Davies’ Farewell to Stromness which works really well on organ.
  12. I do find the use of the word Minster over-done now even if it does signify some kind of mother church in a particular area. It’s most associated, although not exclusively, with the north east of England and while I can see why Southwell might want to distinguish themselves as a cathedral church from other Minster churches, York Minster for example would never be mistaken for anything else and Lincoln is also referred to as a minster.
  13. The offer to also watch via the QR code has a rather unfortunate spelling in Dutch!
  14. The descant to Coe Fen was out of this world. I particularly enjoyed the introduction to the hymn interrupting the dean’s announcement!
  15. If we are in Germany here’s the Rieger in Regensburg https://www.google.com/maps/place/St+Peter+Cathedral,+Domplatz+1,+93047+Regensburg,+Germany/@49.0156188,12.0984913,16z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x479fc1a5d4612f6f:0x868578d45332b41f
  16. It’s interesting to see the Merton organ in the context of the whole building which I’d not seen before. It’s very removed from the choir which must make life difficult for both organist and choir.
  17. Sorry to be pedantic but strangely Beverley Minster isn’t dedicated to St. John of Beverley despite the fact his tomb is there and was a site of pilgrimage, it is dedicated to St John the Evangelist and St Martin of Tours. As a chorister at the Minster we would travel to the small village of Harpham on the way to Bridlington every year on St John of Beverley’s feast day to sing evensong as that church in his birthplace was dedicated to him. I believe there is another church somewhere in Northumberland dedicated to him and I remember being told a story as a chorister about the St John in St Johnstone (as in the football team in Perth) being St John of Beverley but I’m not sure of the truth in that!
  18. Thank you all for your excellent advice and apologies for leaving it so long to reply. Since I originally posted I've had a chance to listen to recordings of the service and it would certainly seem that, with the exception of one hymn, everything seemed pretty tight rhythmically as I do often think I have a string player/singers approach to following a conductor's beat (or it could be the conductor/singers/orchestra were following the organ!). I'm currently looking into options for getting more experience locally, we do suffer a bit up here in Scotland where we have a lot of very good instruments but mostly in the Church of Scotland churches which generally don't have the choral tradition to get this accompanying experience. Great for playing repertoire on, especially of the earlier North German type but less suited to choral accompanying.
  19. Sennheiser and Bose are always good options.
  20. Last week I had the pleasure of accompanying a school choir for a thanksgiving service in one of Scotland’s cathedrals with a very fine organ. While I have more years experience than I care to remember as a parish organist playing hymns and voluntaries plus accompanying/conducting my own church choirs this kind of accompanying, following a conductor on CCTV was new to me. I feel I did pretty well but got me thinking that I want to develop my skills here and wondered what advice forum members would give. What experience do people have following a conductor on CCTV? And how might I gain further experience given I’m probably a bit long in the tooth to go back and follow a typical organ scholar route?
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