The London Festival of Contemporary Church Music took place in St Pancras Church in May this year.  Works by many fine composers were featured, including Michael Finnissy and Richard Rodney Bennett. At the heart of the Festival was a newly built Rodgers combination organ: the first time ever in the UK that an instrument of this type has played such a central role. 

The Festival culminated in the world premier of Francis Pott’s 80-minute oratorio The Cloud of Unknowing for organ and choir, performed by the Vasari Singers, with Jeremy Filsell on the organ.

“Pott’s musical style is tonally-based […] but richly chromatic and laced with telling dissonance. It is also thoroughly grounded in the English oratorio tradition, with reminiscences of Elgar, Walton and Tippett — though some exotic passages in the huge organ part (wonderfully delivered by Jeremy Filsell) sound closer to Messiaen.” Richard Morrison, The Times, 16th May 2006.

Designed in collaboration between Rodgers and MPOS Ltd, a division of Peter Collins Ltd, the organ featured a custom-designed 3 manual Rodgers console integrated with six ranks of pipes in their own bespoke case. The instrument was conceived as a whole, with a British specification drawn up by Mark Underwood (Rodgers UK), Mark Austin (Rodgers USA) and Peter Collins (MPOS Ltd), and was installed and voiced on site at St Pancras.

The pipe case was cleverly designed and built to contain the Rodgers audio system, which consisted of six newly designed, slim-profile speakers (attached to the ceiling of the case, speaking down onto the pipes) and two compact sub-woofer speakers (in the base of the case).

“The Rodgers/MPOS Combination Organ played a crucial part in the great success of the 2006 LFCCM. As both a solo instrument and in an accompanying role it performed superbly. The combination of traditional pipe organ and digital tone production was a triumph.” Christopher Batchelor - Artistic Director: London Festival of Contemporary Church Music

Rodgers has long been the world leader in this field of organ construction, with over 3800 such instruments being built worldwide over the last 38 years. If you would like further information on this type of instrument, please contacts us or send an e-mail to mark.underwood@roland.co.uk.