Choir & Organ

Choir & Organ shines a global spotlight on two distinctive fields of creativity, celebrating inventiveness and excellence in all their forms. We aim to inspire our readers through giving a platform to conductors, organists, composers, and choirs of every kind; and showcasing the imaginative craft of pipe organ building across the centuries, critiquing new organs and tackling ethics in restoring historic instruments.

Champions league

CHOIR & ORGAN PARTNERSHIPS

Choir & Organ

IAO-RCO ORGAN COMPETITION 2022

ENNIS ORGAN SCHOLARSHIPS

IN BRIEF

SAWHNEY COMMISSION FOR COVENTRY

CANTERBURY WELCOMES INAUGURAL CHORAL SCHOLARS

abcd INSPIRING CHORAL LEADERSHIP

SAINT-SULPICE COMPOSITION WINNERS

MAKING IT UP

LONDON SYMPHONY CHORUS REBRANDS

MUSIC FOR PLEASURE

RECITAL ROUND-UP

NEWS FROM NORTH AMERICA • With a special focus on North America in this issue, three organ builders share their latest news, and we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Michael Barone’s ground-breaking Pipedreams radio programme

DREAM ON

Drawing on the past • In designing a new organ for the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Flentrop Orgelbouw sought inspiration from the instruments of Arp Schnitger. Tom Bell asks how this latest acquisition shapes up.

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire • FLENTROP ORGELBOUW (2021)

André Thomas • President, American Choral Directors Association

Autumn leaves • Overcoming the complications of Covid and travel bureaucracy, Matthew Power arrived in Montreal in October for the closing stages of the CIOC, where he found the competition rooted in a broader, ongoing environment of promoting the organ

READERS’ OFFERS • Your chance to WIN CDs, sheet music and books

Spinning a yarn • When it comes to telling stories through music, the mixed voices of the Skylark Ensemble know a thing or two, collating sometimes the most unlikely pieces into programmes that engage audiences with their narrative. Clare Stevens reports

Freestyle • A tribute to Norman Bailey (1933-2021)

Who has seen the wind? • Choir & Organ’s 2022 New Music partnership with VOCES8 opens with an unaccompanied choral work inspired by an Indian raga. Shruthi Rajasekar talks to Matthew Power

Download and print your FREE score now! • New Music is a series of pieces for choir or organ by talented young composers featured in Choir & Organ. Visit our website to

Print maker • Thirty years ago a chance radio broadcast whetted his appetite, and within weeks Tim Rogers had launched Encore Publications. He talks to Stephen Pritchard about the music he publishes, how the company survived Covid, and the importance of promoting the next generation of composers.

Fathers of the Victorians • The Victorian era is commonly heralded as the apogee of British achievement. Yet much of its inventiveness and progressiveness was born in the Georgian era. Nicholas Thistlethwaite considers some leading contributors in the fields of church music and organ building

American dreams • In the ‘land of the free’, two composers draw on an eclectic range of cultural and literary influences in their music. David Wordsworth surveys the choral canons of William Bolcom and John Harbison

Work in progress • The firm’s varied and prolific output demonstrates that members of the Rieger Orgelbau team are no strangers to innovation and experimentation, writes Paul Hale

Rieger Orgelbau – how it all began

TRAVELLER’S JOY • Cast as the ‘Venice of Poland’, modern-day Wrocław belies a somewhat tortured past, writes David Wordsworth

NEXT ISSUE • MARCH 2022

NEW DISCS COMING OUT IN… JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022

CHORAL CDS

REVIEWS

REVIEWS...