Evening Organ Recital with James Mitchell

All are welcome to join us for an evening of spectacular music with our Sub-Organist, James Mitchell. 

This event will also be live-streamed so that you can join us from wherever you are in the world. The live-stream will appear on this page of the website a few moments before the recital is due to begin.

Admission is free with a retiring collection in aid of Cathedral Music. We ask that you register your attendance by clicking 'book now' to the right of this page. This is just to help us manage numbers - walk-ups will also be welcome on the day.

An update on the Gloucester Cathedral organ from our Director of Music, Adrian Partington:

Few cathedral and church organs in the United Kingdom have a pair of organ cases to match the two we have here at Gloucester Cathedral. The “Great Case” dates from around 1666; the smaller case, the “Chaire Case” dates from at least fifty years earlier than that. These cases weren’t always placed where they are now; but since 1718, they have stood proudly in their current position, and have housed several different sets of pipes during the past three hundred years.

Organ pipes and mechanisms wear out  after a time, simply from heavy use; and the Gloucester Cathedral organ has had to have several radical rebuilds since it arrived in its present position. The principal, more recent rebuilds have occurred in 1847 (Henry Willis), 1888 (Henry Willis), 1920 (Harrison and Harrison), and 1970 (Hill, Norman and Beard). Apart from some minor changes and repairs undertaken  in 1998 by Nicholsons of Malvern, the instrument from 1970/71 gave valiant service  for just over fifty years.

It, too, has now failed, as all its predecessors eventually did. In the past few years, some of the pipework has become unusable; but more fundamentally, earlier this year, the transmission , which has been temperamental for some months, ceased to function completely.

Since March, the famous organ of Gloucester Cathedral has been silent, and, without a total restoration, will not speak again. The Chapter , anticipating a cathedral organ crisis, began in 2018 to prepare for a rebuild. Various inspections and studies have since been  carried out, and several different schemes for a renovation have been discussed .

A contract has been signed with organ specialists Nicholson & Co, who have successfully cared for the instrument for over twenty years, to refurbish the organ, with work due to commence in 2024.  While we wait for the organ to be rebuilt, we are grateful to Mr. Paul Vaughan for the loan to us of an excellent “digital” organ, which is the instrument which currently accompanies all the services in the Cathedral. We're currently experimenting with the virtual pipe organ software Hauptwerk, using sounds from the organ at Hereford Cathedral. We think it sounds almost as good as it does down the road!