Meet our authors & contributors  

David Pipe studied at Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music. Following work in cathedral music, including posts at York Minster and Leeds Cathedral, he is now Organist of Huddersfield Town Hall and Director of Music at Cartmel Priory. In demand as a conductor and teacher, David also examines for the Royal College of Organists. Acclaimed for his versatility, recent projects have included a collaboration with a symphonic metal band in a sell-out concert at York Minster, and recording the soundtrack for an online video game.

Instagram: dcjpipe

Huw Morgan read Music at Oxford, later studying choral conducting at the Royal Academy of Music with Patrick Russill. He lives in Bristol where he directs a number of choirs and is Associate Director of Music at All Saints, Clifton. He is a founder of the online transatlantic publishing collective Firehead Organ Works; his own music has been widely performed, including recently at BBC Tectonics (Glasgow), Windfire Festival (Sydney), Nidaros Cathedral (Trondheim) and at Festival Internacional di Organo Barocco (Mexico City).

Instagram: mainlysloworganmusic

Paul Hale has been writing for Organists’ Review (which he edited for 15 years) since 1983. Following an organ scholarship at New College Oxford, Paul has had a multi-faceted career as cathedral organist (at Rochester and Southwell), teacher, choral director (conducting Nottingham Bach Choir), recitalist, author and organ consultant. Since 2016 the latter three have dominated. He has been President of the Cathedral Organists’ Association and the Organ Club, an RCO examiner, and in 2017 was presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace with the Thomas Cranmer Award, in recognition of his service to the Church of England.

paulhale.org

Kevin Bowyer was born in Southend-on-Sea in 1961, and now resides in the remotest depths of the Kintyre peninsula, where he is engaged in writing a connected series of pastoral historical novels.

Initial studies with David Sanger, Christopher Bowers-Broadbent and Virginia Black set him up to win five international first prizes, play concerts around the globe, and make over a hundred solo CDs. He was, for nine years, Senior Lecturer in organ at the RNCM, and has been Organist to the University of Glasgow since 2005. Retirement is in sight.

Ophelia Amar is a French-British musician based in London. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music under the direction of David Titterington (MMus and Advanced Diploma in organ). She was awarded a Premier Prix in piano and in organ from the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, where she studied with Éric Lebrun. She is an active performer both in the UK and in France, and currently works as the administrator of the St Albans International Organ Festival. 

opheliaamar.com

Instagram: ophelia.amar

Ourania Gassiou is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied with Nicolas Kynaston. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed extensively throughout the UK and Europe in major series and international festivals. In 2011 she was appointed Organist of the Athens Concert Hall. Ourania is particularly interested in promoting the organ in her native Greece, and has created innovative projects which attract large audiences to establish an increasingly prominent role for the organ in Greek musical culture.

Instagram: ourania.gassiou

German concert organist Angela Metzger has given recitals throughout Europe and south-east Asia. She has performed with the Gürzenich Orchestra in the Elbphilharmonie, and as soloist with the Augsburger Philharmoniker and the WDR Sinfonieorchester.

Angela is a prizewinner at many organ competitions, and has been awarded the Bayernwerk Cultural Award. She studied church music and organ with Edgar Krapp and Bernhard Haas at the University of Music in Munich, where she taught as a substitute for Bernhard Haas.

angela-metzger.org/en/home-en/

Instagram: angelametzgerorgel 

Tom Winpenny has held roles at St Albans Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral, and studied as Organ Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge. His many solo organ recordings include surveys of music by Malcolm Williamson, Elisabeth Lutyens, John Joubert and Peter Racine Fricker (Toccata Classics), and Robert Schumann, Judith Bingham and Olivier Messiaen (Naxos). His recordings of organ works by Gerald Hendrie and Francis Pott were selected as Critics’ Choices in the American Record Guide, whilst his recording of Elgar’s complete organ works (Naxos) was selected as a Critic’s Choice by Gramophone. An album of organ music by Florence Price will shortly be released on Naxos.

www.tomwinpenny.org

Instagram: tomwinpenny

Dr Anthony Hammond is the author of the book Pierre Cochereau: Organist of Notre-Dame, published by the University of Rochester Press, and of numerous articles on the organ and its music. A critically acclaimed concert and recording artist, musicologist, and composer, he studied in England with Roger Fisher and David Briggs, and in Paris with Naji Hakim. He has performed in many of the most prestigious venues in Europe and America, and has broadcast on television and radio on both sides of the Atlantic. Today he is Director of Music at St Peter’s Episcopal Church, Morristown, New Jersey.

anthonyhammond.com

Instagram: anthonywhammond

Dr John Rowntree trained and worked initially as a civil engineer, later moving into music. He holds a Master’s degree from Newcastle University on the development of music in young children, and a Doctorate from Southampton University on the organ reform movement in Europe and Britain. He has held lectureships in the University of Reading and King Alfred’s College, now the University of Winchester. He was awarded an ARSCM in 2018. He has written extensively on the organ, liturgy and liturgical music. Earlier this year, John retired as Director of the Choir and Organist of Douai Abbey. An accredited member of the Association of Independent Organ Advisers, he has advised over significant historic and contemporary organs, and continues his advisory work.

Professor David Baker worked in UK higher education, latter as Principal of Plymouth Marjon. He gained his FRCO at 17, then became Organ Scholar of Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, graduating with a first class honours degree in Music, then took an MMus in Music from King’s College London. He was Principal and Chief Executive of the University of St Mark and St John, Plymouth, and Deputy Chair of the Joint Information Systems Committee.

In 2011, David founded the Halifax Organ Academy, and is an accredited teacher with the Royal College of Organists’ Academy. His book The Organ is a standard text, and his recently published biography of the renowned twentieth-century recitalist Geoffrey Tristram, A Very British Organist, has received high praise. He has edited the organ music of both William Herschel and John Varley Roberts (each in their time Organist of Halifax Parish Church). Roberts is the subject of David’s forthcoming monograph, to be published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis.