tribunegallery

Neil Shepherd - presently Organist and DofM at Standish Parish Church, Lancashire. Previously DofM at Cirencester Parish Church. Other past appointments include St. James, Daisy Hill (1984-9), St Thomas, St Annes on Sea (1989-94), St John Great Harwood (1994-8) and Keynsham Parish Church (1999 -1992). Interests include theatre-pipe organs, cathedral music and single malts! I had a career change recently and am now working in the travel industry based in Whalley, Lancashire, specialising in tailor made tours to the Baltics and Russia, as well as running a specialist music tours arm of the company. Not missing the hypocrisy and politics of large Anglican churches in the slightest!

Having been "brung up" in the northern town of Hindley, as an early teenage organ student, I was refused permission to practice on what the then churchwardens deemed to be their "precious" Schulze organ for similar reasons - I didn't have an R.C.O. diploma or similar. The (same) churchwardens twenty years later were responsible along with the PCC of silencing their "precious" organ, turning the console into the console for a toaster and committing some of the worst ecclesiastical vandalism ever!