This is a fantastic opportunity to see and play two historic organs. At 10am we will be visiting St James’ Bermondsey which has a 3-manual Bishop organ dating from 1829, and most lately restored by Goetze & Gwynn (see their webpage here for some history and details of the restoration).

Then at 2pm we move on to St Anne’s, Limehouse, which has a 3-manual Gray and Davison organ (1851) with a Grade 1 Historic Organ Certificate (see here for some history of the Church and the organ).

Marilyn’s workshop took place on Thursday, 18th April at 2-4pm, at Christ’s Chapel, Dulwich. The topic was: “How to learn and how to practise what is learnt”.

The Annual General Meeting will take place at St John’s, East Dulwich on Monday March 11th. Start time is 7 for 7.30 pm. Music will be provided by both John Webber and Harry Bramma. Come for a summary of last year’s events, a foretaste of this year’s programme and to elect new committee members!

NB if anyone would be interested in joining the committee, please contact the chair, Irene Wolstenholme.

You will hear and be able to play the 3-manual, 72-speaking-stop Compton organ in St George’s Cathedral, hosted by Norman Harper, former Director of Music. Norman will play a short recital, including some of Messiaen’s Nativité du Seigneur, which he used to play in its entirety each year until he retired in 2017. Members will then be free to play the instrument up until c4.00, possibly beyond.

The SSLSO repertoire meeting took place at Nicky Jones’ home on Saturday 4^th November at 2.30 pm. The focus was on organ music for the Advent and Christmas periods. Present were Norman and Marilyn Harper, Alan Langridge, Andrew Chadney, Irene Wolstenholme, Norman Flower, Nicky Jones and Clare Perkins from the South London Music Shop.

Our second Summer Social was held at St Giles Church, Camberwell, in the afternoon of Sunday the 7^th August. St Giles has a very attractive garden area behind the church which works very well, and even better, a well established nightclub area in the basement of the church meaning an easy supply of cold drinks, and, as it happened, a convenient refuge should the rain actually appear.

The weather forecast for several weeks before had been remarkably consistent, with sunshine predicted for most of the day but with the possibility of some rain later in the day. As it happened, it started raining at the beginning of the event so the early arrivals started in the bar area and very pleasant it was too. But the rain was only to last a short while before the sun burst out and we all 15 of us went out in the garden.

Ashley Valentine was on the SSLSO committee at the time the idea was raised of having a summer social, and originally suggested the church as a place to hold the Social because of the advantage of there being, in effect, a pub in the basement. He is the organist there and gave a short organ recital at the end to round it all off. He chose two pieces written by Samuel Wesley –  Andante in F and Choral Song and Fugue – who was the organist at St Giles’ in the middle 1800s and (as Ashley said) he may well have played them on that very same organ: maybe his ghost was dancing with us (not that any of us were actually dancing!)

It was a great time and hopefully we can look forward to it again next summer, and maybe we could do actual dancing!!!

Martin Callingham

Nov 4th, 2023, 2:30pm – An afternoon playing and discussing Christmas Repertoire, at the home of our member, Nicky Jones, in Forest Hill, SE23. Please bring a piece of Christmas music that you play, ideally one less well known. Please contact the secretary, Andrew Chadney ([email protected]), for directions.