Choir & Organ

The leading independent magazine for all those interested in the choral and organ worlds.

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.

Specialist writers appraise new editions and recordings of standard repertoire and works fresh from the composer's pen, while our news and previews chart the latest developments in a changing world and present opportunities to become involved. Choir & Organ is an invitation to engage with two unique areas of music – to explore the new, and look again at the familiar.

When fire swept through a basilica in Wroclaw, it took with it an exceptional organ by Michael Engler – the last of his lifetime. In the June issue of Choir & Organ, we explore how a trio of organ building firms has drawn on research to reconstruct the original instrument in Poland.

 

Elsewhere, composer-conductor Bob Chilcott talks to David Hill about being inspired by David Willcocks and Philip Ledger, arranging music for Radio 2, and 12 years with The King’s Singers; we consider the enduring attraction of William Byrd’s liturgical works 400 years after his death; organist Thomas Allery introduces a new project to unearth and record organ works by forgotten composers over the past 300 years; for centuries most of the significant works in the choral canon have been instigated and premiered by amateur choirs and this issue offers an insight into how a number of contemporary choirs have set about the commissioning process and how composers have responded; we celebrate our sister title Gramophone's centenary by sharing a few articles from its archive; remembering Sir David Lumsden; inside the workshop of Mascioni Organs in Azzio, northern Italy; and Ben Bloor, organist at The London Oratory.