Stephen Hicks

[Tony Price]

When I was at college (St. Mary's, Strawberry Hill, between 1972 and 1975) a young and apparently upcoming Stephen Hicks was then, to my mind, well known in the organ world. I recall him borrowing my copy of the Bach 'St. Anne' and giving a excellent rendition of it at no notice to fill for somone else at a concert in the college chapel (a small 'cathedral'!).

 

Whatever happened to him - or was he not as well known at the time as I recall?

 

The instrument at St. Mary's was believed at the time to be the very last built by Kingsgate Davidson, and, allegedly, used up much of the remaining pipe-work they had in their workshops at the time. Can anyone substantiate this?

 

http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N15874

 

I seem to recall a single rank running 16', 8', 4', 2' and 1' on the Positive.

 

Tony

[AJJ]

I seem to remember him doing a demo LP recording on an Allen somewhere around then - very good playing - wasn't he based in Brighton at some point?

 

AJJ

[Graham Powell]

See here http://stephenhicks.net/

 

Graham

[Tony Price]

See here http://stephenhicks.net/

 

Graham

 

Thanks for that, Graham - fascinating, in that the web site seems to offer reviews (from the dates shown in the reviews quoted from) written in the 1970s. A little googling suggests that the CD pictured on his web site was, at least, post 1995.

 

The reviews of the time lead one to believe that there might have been a promising career as an international organist ahead of him.......... sadly, it would seem, things did not work out.

 

I did like the pic of him seated at what looks like an armchair in front of the console!!!

 

Tony

[Malcolm Kemp]

There are at least two organists called Stephen Hicks. There is one whose biography has already been given above via a web-link and I recall having an LP of him demonstrating an Allen organ many years ago. There is another - I believe around the same age bracket - who graduated in music from Durham, having at some point switched from reading law. He has spent most, if not all, of his career as a teacher at Brighton College and for a while in the 1970s was director of music at St Paul's Brighton (very extreme Anglo Catholic church behind the Brighton Centre, having a tower looking vaguely like an early moon-rocket) which for decades has had the best church choir in the area by a very wide margin.

 

I suspect that this is how the refeence to Brighton arose in an earlier psoting.

 

Malcolm Kemp

[Tony Price]

Many thanks to the board member who passed my enquiry on to Stephen. As a result he has been in touch, and advised that he is playing:

 

1. on Tuesday 18th August at the Tullamore International Summer Organ Festival on the Frobenius instrument in the church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Tullamore

 

The programme includes music by Byrd, Bull, Mendelssohn, Bach and Dupre.

 

2. on Friday 25th September a lunchtime recital with a visiting Norwegian choir at St. Anne & St. Agnes in Gresham Street, London

 

Tony