Thank you to everybody who came to our beautiful Organ Recital on Friday, 20th September 2024, where we heard a stunning Programme played by our very talented Organist Neil Taylor. We would like to thank everybody who made this possible through kind and generous donations. 

Here’s what Old Rossallian Bruce Carlin (SE,1967-72) and donor to the Organ Fund had to say:

“Aged thirteen on arrival, I have to assume that the Rossall Chapel organ was not the first pipe organ I ever heard, but it is certainly the first one I have any recollection of. And it is certainly the first organ I ever had the chance to look inside and see the array of pipes and mechanisms linking the whole thing together. And it was certainly the instrument that nurtured my enjoyment of organ music, that has remained with me throughout my life. The role of the organ in accompanying the singing in Chapel, and the voluntaries played at the end of the services introduced me to the wonders of what is often called The King of Instruments. A friend and I founded a music society which we named after famous alumnus Thomas Beecham, and we gave its inaugural talk on Late 19th & Early 20th Century French Organ Music.

Rossall also encouraged my life long love of classical music generally, and I recall hours spent in the gramophone library in the Beecham Rooms during free periods, learning new pieces of music that sometimes I might then hear performed by the Hallé during school holidays. Later I joined the school chorus and sang in works as diverse as Handel’s Messiah and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, something I continued to do in my time at University and beyond, and many pieces learned that way have remained among my favourites to this day.

But Chapel must also have sowed the seeds of something ultimately more important that even its organ, as not long after leaving Rossall and during my time at University, I felt called to ordained ministry and went on to train at theological college and spend my life in parish ministry, as part of which I was able to encourage organists and church musicians to offer others what the instrument had offered me.

And so, when Rossall launched an appeal to restore what had become a sadly dilapidated instrument, I was happy to offer a modest donation and pleased to be invited to attend the inaugural recital on the organ to celebrate the completion of this project.”