David Wood

Anna Lapwood with David Wood and Michael Leadbeater. It was a great pleasure to tune the organ for Anna Lapwood's concert in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, at the end of May. As a Hallé Featured Artist, she performed the Poulenc Organ Concerto and Kristina Arakelyan 's Toccata for Organ and Orchestra under the baton of Emilia Hoving. Chatting to her before the concert, she expressed her admiration for the wonderful instrument by Marcussen, which has been in our care since it was built. It...

Our most recent installation is of a rare French organ in St Paul's Roman Catholic Church, Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire. This little gem of an instrument was built in 1922 by Le Mintier & Gloton, notable pipe organ builders in Nantes and successors to Louis Debiere. It has one manual and no pedals. The Orgue de Choeur was acquired from a French convent by a church in Yeadon where, after a period of uncertainty about its future, it was slated for refurbishment and relocation. The instrument is...

Simon Bell, the director of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum, is now enjoying practising at home on a 1993 J W Walker organ. We dismantled the instrument in Keswick this week and reassembled it in a room in Simon's house. He is the third owner of what is regarded as a famously reliable little instrument. It has three stops of 8', 4' and 2' and the action is mechanical. Besides his duties at Tewkesbury Abbey, Simon is organist at Dean Close School, Cheltenham. He has held appointments at St...