Lunchtime Organ Concerts Resume at St Michael & All Angels Church

New season opens with Jack Spencer this Friday

The organ at St. Michael and All Angels
The organ at St. Michael and All Angels

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After an 18-month gap caused by Covid-19, the monthly Lunchtime Organ Concerts are resuming in St Michael & All Angels Church, in Bedford Park.

The 2021-22 season opens on Friday 3 September when Jack Spencer, one of St Michaels’ own organists, will perform a programme of French romantic music and English light music, including works by Coates, Grainger and Elgar.

Jack Spencer’s first experience of organ playing was at Leeds Minster, after which he held organ scholarships at Rochester Cathedral, Queens’ College, Cambridge, and Southwark Cathedral. He studied with Graham Barber, leading to an interest in German and English romantic repertoire; reinforcing this through study with Andrew Dewar in Paris and London.

Jack has taken part in public masterclasses with Dame Gillian Weir, Stephen Cleobury and John Scott Whiteley and in several complete Bach performances, most recently recording the Neumeister Chorales at St Michael & All Angels. See more, and the full programme, on the St Michael’s website.

The other organists performing this autumn will be Callum Anderson of St Peter’s Acton Green on 1 October; Jonathan Lilley, of Waltham Abbey Church on 5 November; and Polina Sosnina, of St Martin in the Fields and Brompton Oratory on 3 December. They are listed at Organrecitals.com.

The concerts take place on the first Friday of the month from 12.30 to 1.15pm, at the church in Bath Road, two minutes’ walk from Turnham Green tube station. Admission is free with a retiring collection for the church‘s music fund.

The organ at St Michael & All Angels was built in Switzerland by the specialist firm La Manufacture d’Orgues St Martin. It has 1,667 pipes, many of which were sponsored by individuals and groups under the church’s Pipe Up! appeal. After more than six years’ planning and fundraising, it was played formally for the first time at a service of Thanksgiving in the church on 26 September 2013.

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August 29, 2021


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