Oliver (Ollie) Edwardes, Jesus College’s Organ Scholar, has taken part in a new fund-raising virtual performance which involved 37 organ scholars from cathedrals and colleges across the UK.

The project was part of a wider event promoted by the Self-Isolation Choir (SIC) to raise funds for several UK music charities. With musical gatherings, rehearsals and concerts on hold due to the current pandemic, the SIC has enabled musicians to learn and record voice or instrumental parts for a variety of works, which are then combined in a recording studio to create a full performance.

 

Ollie, along with organ scholars from as far afield as Westminster Abbey, the University of Cambridge, Durham, Liverpool, Portsmouth and Brecon, performed Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s Chorale Improvisation on ‘Nun danket alle Gott’. Each scholar recorded a bar of the music before the whole piece was carefully stitched together by Richard Pinel, Director of Music at Jesus College, Cambridge. The virtual performance provided a hearty introduced to the SIC’s ‘All Things Bright and Virtual’ recording– a series of eight favourite hymns sung by over 1,000 people in the choir, accompanied by some of the finest organists in the world. Ralph Allwood MBE directed the project and you can watch the recording in full below.

 

Ollie joined Jesus College as Organ Scholar in October 2020. Learning several instruments from a young age, he took up the organ while at school. He became a member of numerous choirs, orchestras and wind bands and developed a passion for church music, playing the organ in local churches and working with local choirs. He features at 00.34 and 02.55 in the organ performance, which you can view here. He’s playing the organ of Holy Trinity Church in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Sir Bryn Terfel, has also been involved in the ‘All Things Bright and Virtual’ project. He recorded the introduction to ‘Guide me, O thou great Redeemer’ – the Jesus College hymn.