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The London Oratory |
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MUSIC STAFF
Director of Music
Patrick Russill Patrick Russill is recognised as one of the leading figures in English church music. Following organ studies with Nicholas Danby while organ scholar at New College, Oxford, he was appointed Organist of the London Oratory in 1977 at the age of 23 in succession to Ralph Downes, on Downes’ nomination. In 1999 he was appointed Director of Music at the Oratory, assuming overall responsibility for its choral tradition and especially for its famous professional choir, which under his direction ‘remains among the finest mixed-voice choirs in the country’ (Choir & Organ).
In 1987 he was invited by the Royal Academy of Music to found Britain’s first conservatoire church music department and since 1997 has been Head of Choral Conducting there as well as a professor of organ. In addition, he is Chief Examiner of the Royal College of Organists and Visiting Professor of Choral Direction at the Leipzig Hochschule für Musik und Theater. He is in demand as a juror (including the Llangollen International Eisteddfod) and for choral conducting masterclasses (including the Associations of both the Cathedral Organists in 2006 and Assistant Cathedral Organists in 2005 and the Music Masters’ and Mistress’s Association in 2007).
As an organ recitalist he has played at the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, in Europe, Asia and all over the UK. He introduced the reconstructed Tudor organs of the Early English Organ Project to London’s South Bank in a Queen Elizabeth Hall recital acclaimed by the Independent on Sunday, in its classical review of 2007, as the outstanding London keyboard concert of the year.
He has published articles on various aspects of the Catholic musical tradition including early Tudor liturgical organ music, baroque organ music of Catholic Germany (in The Cambridge Companion to the Organ), Howells’s Latin church music and Dupré’s Vespers as well as editions of choral music by Sweelinck and Howells. He was Musical Editor of the Catholic Hymn Book (1998) and a contributor to New Grove.
In 2007 he was appointed a Vice-President of the Herbert Howells Society in recognition of his continuing scholarly work for neglected choral works of Howells. He is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music and an Honorary Fellow of both the Guild of Church Musicians and the Royal College of Organists – the highest accolade of each institution.
Contact: phone 020 7808 0911 Email: patrickrussill@blueyonder.co.uk
~~~ Organist
John McGreal
John McGreal read music as an organ scholar at Peterhouse, Cambridge where he studied organ with David Rowland and Peter Hurford. He continued his studies at the Royal College of Music in organ with Nicholas Danby and harpsichord with Ruth Dyson winning the major prizes for Baroque keyboard performance, most especially the organ music of J.S. Bach. Further study continued with Dame Gillian Weir and Gustav Leonhardt. A fluent speaker of German, he spent a year in Lübeck, researching the North German Baroque keyboard repertoire and discovering the rich organ landscape.
John McGreal was Organist at St Etheldreda's Church, Ely Place from 1997-1999 where he first recorded for the Catholic Charity Aid to the Church in Need and for whom he has subsequently recorded with the London Oratory Choir.
In 1999 he was appointed Organist of the Oratory, where the organ enjoys both a solo and an accompanimental voice in the liturgy, a role which he has maintained and developed. He is director of the annual October Organ Recital Series and founder of Oratory Baroque, a series devoted to the performance of smaller-scale repertoire in the intimate setting of the Little Oratory.
His performance of Bach as part of a commemorative recording for the 75th anniversary of the Organ Club was praised in Organists' Review for its "great power, compelling utter absorption from the listener." John McGreal is also in demand as a private music teacher.
Contact: phone 020 7808 0924 email: organist@jdmcg.org.uk
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Director of the Oratory Junior Choir and Assistant OrganistCharles Cole
Charles Cole was appointed in 2005 as Director of the Oratory Junior Choir and Assistant Organist. His training was as a chorister at Westminster Cathedral before winning a major music scholarship to Ampleforth where he studied the organ with Simon Wright. He went on to become Organ Scholar at Exeter College, Oxford, where he read Music and studied the organ with David Sanger before returning to Westminster Cathedral as Organ Scholar.
He is now also Director of Music at Our Lady of Victories, Kensington, Duty Organist at Westminster Cathedral and Director of the Schola Cantorum of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School with whom he has toured extensively in Europe and the USA and made three CD recordings.
His own recordings at the organ include Vivaldi’s Beatus vir and Duruflé’s Requiem and two CDs of contemporary church music by John Streeting and Jonathan Willcocks. He has also played for a number of broadcasts including Songs of Praise (BBC TV), Sunday Worship (BBC Radio 4) and a live televised broadcast of Midnight Mass from Westminster Cathedral. He has played at many prestigious venues in London including Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, Royal Albert Hall for a Prom with Jeremy Summerly and the Oxford Camerata and at the Oratory as part of the London SouthBank Centre’s mammoth Messiaen Festival, From the Canyons to the Stars in 2008.
Contact: phone 07876 250 172 email oratoryjuniorchoir@gmail.com |