St John's College Cambridge Organ Festival

The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, presents a concert as part of a five-day long festival to mark the installation of a new organ in the College Chapel.

The new Harrison & Harrison instrument has been built with historic pipework constructed in 1889 by pioneering Victorian organ builder ‘Father’ Henry Willis, which has been relocated to St John’s College Chapel to replace the Mander instrument, which was installed in the early 1990s.

Organ music has a rich history at St John’s – an organ has been owned by the College since it was founded in 1511, and the famous College Choir has been accompanied by the instrument throughout its 350-year history.

The programme features a range of works for solo organ, organ duet, and choir and organ. The College Choir is joined by acclaimed British organist, pianist, and conductor Wayne Marshall in his own Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, and by baritone Tom Butler in Vaughan William’s setting of the collection of poems titled ‘Easter’ by the seventeenth-century Welsh poet and Anglican priest George Herbert.

It also features the premiere of a new organ work, Swift Messengers, by Tim Watts, College Assistant Professor and Director of Studies in Music, and a Fellow of St John’s.

Vaughan Williams: Five Mystical Songs
Tim Watts: Swift Messengers
Imogen Holst: A Hymne to Christ
Eleanor Daley: Upon your heart
Joanna Marsh: Worthy is the Lamb
Wayne Marshall: Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis
John Rutter: Variations on an Easter Theme
Britten: Rejoice in the Lamb

Tom Butler, baritone
Wayne Marshall, organ
Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge
Tingshuo Yang, Herbert Howells Organ Scholar
Pascal Bachmann, Junior Organ Scholar
Christopher Gray, conductor

Presented by Ian Skelly, and recorded live in the Chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, on 9th May 2026.