Wednesdays at 1.15pm Free Admission, Retiring Collection

We are very grateful to our performers for giving their time and skills for free. Please give generously to the retiring collection to help cover the expenses of the series. Thank you.

All the recitals will be live-streamed on the Church's YouTube Channel. Please see below for the direct links 

Wednesdays at 1.15 pm 

15 July - Simon Hogan (Southwark Cathedral)

22 July - Charles Andrews (Temple Church)

 

Simon Hogan (Southwark Cathedral)

Chorale-Fantasia on Darwell’s 148th (Harold Darke, 1888-1976)       

Andante from A Little Organ Book (Charles Wood, 1866-1926)         

Introduction and Allegro (Arthur Wills, 1926-2020)

St Bride, assisted by angels (Judith Bingham, born 1952)

Voices of the World (Iain Farrington, born 1977)

Simon Hogan is the Cathedral Organist and Assistant Director of Music at Southwark Cathedral.

Simon was a chorister at St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, and it was during this time that he started learning the piano and organ, developing a passion for cathedral music which has stayed with him to this day. Following organ scholarships at Bristol and Salisbury Cathedrals, he moved to London in 2008 to study organ performance at the Royal College of Music, where he subsequently graduated with first class honours. During his final year at the RCM Simon was Organ Scholar at St Paul’s Cathedral, where he regularly accompanied and directed the world-famous choir, and gave recitals on the renowned Willis organ. In 2012 Simon moved to Southwell, Nottinghamshire, where he spent seven years as Assistant Director of Music at Southwell Minster. Here he directed the Minster’s girls’ choir and the Minster Chorale, and played the organ for all services, recordings, tours and broadcasts. Following a period of freelance work during the pandemic, Simon became Organist of St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, in 2021, and moved to his role at Southwark Cathedral in December 2022. Until the end of 2025 Simon was also Organist to the Cathedral Singers of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. As a soloist Simon has given recitals in venues across the UK, including the cathedrals of Canterbury, Durham, Hereford and Westminster, The Albert Hall, Nottingham, and Rochdale Town Hall. Recent notable performances include the complete organ symphonies of Louis Vierne in a single day, the première of a new work for eight organs and electronics by Wolfgang Mitterer for Karlsruhe’s 300th anniversary, and a performance of the Poulenc Organ Concerto with the Orchestra of the Kolobov Novaya Opera Theatre, Moscow.

Simon has studied organ performance with Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin, Daniel Cook, David Graham, Robert Quinney and Colin Walsh. He has studied conducting with Paul Brough, Patrick Russill and Peter Stark, improvisation with David Briggs, and harpsichord with Terrance Charlston. Simon is the principal organist for JAM – an organisation which commissions and performs new music for brass, organ and choir by leading contemporary composers – and as such he has enjoyed working with some of the country’s finest ensembles, including the BBC Singers, Gesualdo Six and Onyx Brass, and has premiered works by many of the country’s leading composers. Simon features on a wide range of commercial recordings, both as accompanist, conductor, and soloist, most recently on a disc of contemporary choral music performed by Siglo de Oro (Delphian), and a disc of choral and organ commissions from the Cathedral Singers of Christ Church, Oxford (Convivium), which includes a Toccata for organ, written for Simon by Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

 

Thomas Allery

In addition to his duties running the music programme at Temple Church, Thomas Allery maintains an active career as a keyboard player, in demand both as a soloist and continuo player, and equally at home on and harpsichord. Recent concert engagements have taken him to festivals at Buxton, St Albans International Organ Festival, Paxton, Orkney, Cadogan Hall, Lichfield Festival, and The Grange opera. In 2024 he was sponsored by the Eric Thompson to make a film of historic music from the City of London entitled ‘Sounds of the Square Mile’.

Thomas is in regular demand as a continuo player on organ and harpsichord, regularly performing with the Sixteen and with the award-winning chamber ensemble, Ensemble Hesperi. With this group, he has performed, broadcast and recorded widely. This ensemble has a reputation for its imaginative programming and its specialism in Scottish baroque repertoire. With Hesperi, Thomas was a ‘Live Music Now’ artist, delivering regular workshops in care homes, day centres and SEND schools across the UK, including projects leading choral residency programmes in care homes. In 2014-15, Thomas was a Junior Fellow in Harpsichord and Continuo at the Royal College of Music, and in 2019, he was selected as a Britten-Pears young artist, performing Bach cantatas under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe at Snape Maltings.

Today, Thomas is an advocate for the performance of figured bass and is passionate about its use as a pedagogical tool for music students. He is currently undertaking research into how seventeenth and eighteenth centuries continuo treatises can be adapted for use in keyboard education today and presented on this at the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini’s Conference on Basso continuo in 2021. Thomas currently is a professor of basso continuo in the Historical Performance department at the Royal College of Music.

Having initially studied Music at the University of Oxford, he subsequently graduated with distinction from the Masters programme at the Royal College of Music before being awarded a scholarship to study for an Artist Diploma at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he studied with Carole Cerasi and James Johnstone. In 2016 he was supported by the Eric Thompson trust to study historic organ repertoire with Erwin Wiersinga at the Martinikirk in Groningen.

Charles Andrews is Organist of the Temple Church and professor of organ and Organ co-ordinator at the Royal College of Music, continuing a long-standing connection between the two institutions. Charles studied at the RCM with David Graham, Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin, John Barstow and John Blakely with the aid of a Douglas & Kyra Downie Award, achieving the Harold Darke Memorial Prize for organ.

Before joining the Temple Church, Charles was Associate Director of Music at All Saints, Margaret Street, one of London’s most prestigious music departments, from 2011-16. Recently, four live performances with Temple Church Choir have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, including the first performance of Carmina tempore viri by Kenneth Hesketh (nominated for an Ivor Novello Award) in 2021. Engagements for 2026 include a recital at St Bavo, Haarlem in the Orgelstad concert series. A solo recital of British music, recorded at the Temple Church, was released in October 2025 and is available from the Temple Church shop or here, https://orcd.co/templeorgan100

Charles’s playing can be heard at several weekly services and concerts at the Temple Church, continuing the virtuoso tradition of such predecessors as George Thalben-Ball and John Birch.

 

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