William McVicker

Dr William McVicker is Organ Curator at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Professor of Organology at the Academy and Organist at Bromley Parish Church. He was Organ Scholar at the College of St Hild & St Bede, University of Durham, subsequently becoming Caedmon Fellow in Music. He read music, winning a British Academy Scholarship and a Bowes Bequest to study organ in Paris whilst writing his PhD on technical aspects of organ design. He studied organ with Daniel Roth, David Hill, Ian Shaw, James O’Donnell and in a masterclass with Dame Gillian Weir.

He has performed at numerous prestigious venues, including the Royal Festival Hall, The Royal Albert Hall, Westminster Abbey and King’s College Cambridge. Other concert highlights have included solo appearances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and with Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria he has performed Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony, Poulenc’s Organ Concerto and toured in the Canary Islands with Janácek’s Glagolitic Mass. William has conducted numerous stage productions, including Britten’s children’s opera Noye's Fludde. Tours have included concerts in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Terni and Folignio Cathedrals in Italy, the basilicas of Spello and Todi, the Thomaskirke in Leipzig, the Hofkirche in Dresden and Bach’s church in Eisenach. He was invited to perform in Australia in Adelaide, Tanunda and Melbourne, returning to perform in the Barossa and subsequently giving concerts in New Zealand, Malaysia, Norway, and Lagos in Nigeria. Recent recitals have included concerts at Durham and Orvieto Cathedrals and at Christ Church Spitalfields.

Broadcast work has included BBCTV, as well as independent radio and television both in the UK and abroad, and presenting Building a Library and Record Review on BBC Radio 3. Recordings include ten discs of choral music and top-selling Great Organ Classics for Classic FM and BMG/Conifer. William has published for Boosey & Hawkes, edited two BIOS journals, co-written four books in the series Targeting Music for Schott & Co. and regularly contributes articles and features to a wide range of journals and magazines.

William is a writer and occasionally arranges and composes: Dame Gillian Weir recently recorded his Variations on Tea for Two for Priory Records at Birmingham Town Hall. Arrangements include works by Elgar, Rachmaninov and Karl Jenkins, published by Boosey & Hawkes and Schott & Co with whom he has published four music education books entitled Targeting Music. His Missa Brevis (1985) has been performed by several cathedral choirs, and Via Crucis, for two unaccompanied cellos, has received performances by cellists from the London Mozart Players.

William works as a professional organ adviser. Projects have included the restorations of the organs at the Royal Festival Hall, St Mary Redcliffe, Christ’s Chapel Dulwich, St Michael Cornhill, Christ Church Spitalfields, Canterbury Cathedral, St Mary’s Portsea, with on-going projects at Manchester Town Hall, Leeds Town Hall, and Brasenose College, Oxford. He is Chairman of the Association of Independent Organ Advisers (AIOA), Organs Adviser to the Diocese of Southwark and formerly to the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England (CFCE). An Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Musical Instrument Technology, William was recently elected an Honorary Member of the Bromley & Croydon Organists’ Association and is an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. He was appointed an Honorary Research Fellow at the Academy and hopes soon to publish a long-awaited study of the English organ and its repertoire: The Tonal Architecture and Music of the English Organ.

William teaches Organology at the Academy; the course focuses on the national schools of organ construction and repertoire, and how consideration of them affects the approach to performance.