Celebrity Organ Recital

Gordon Stewart was born in Dundee, the son of Rev. James Stewart, minister of St Matthew’s Church. He studied piano with Kathleen Blackwood and organ with Eoin Bennet and W D Bernard before leaving Dundee to study in Manchester and Geneva with Eric Chadwick, Gillian Weir and Lionel Rogg, being awarded a performer’s diploma with distinction in Manchester and a Premier Prix and the Prix Otto Barblan in Geneva. His post-graduate study was funded by a generous grant from the Sir James Caird Travelling Scholarship Trust.

For 15 years he worked in cathedral music, first at Manchester then at Blackburn. For 30 years he was organist at Huddersfield Town Hall playing the 1860 Father Willis organ. He is now Organist Emeritus.

He has recorded on organs in the UK and in South Africa on the Priory, Dolcan and Lammas labels and has played concertos with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Northern Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of Opera North and Orchestra Victoria. For over 20 years he broadcast regularly as organist and conductor on BBC radio and television, chiefly as a musical director on Daily Service, Sunday Half Hour and Songs of Praise.

Gordon’s repertoire is large and covers all the major schools of organ composition. He is well-known as a teacher and taught for several years at the Royal Northern College of Music, then at Cambridge University. He has appeared as visiting tutor at courses for the Royal College of Organists, Oundle Organ Week, Gothenburg Organ Academy and Shenandoah Church Music Institute in Virginia.

Gordon has played concerts throughout the UK including Celebrity Concerts at St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, throughout Europe, and in the United States, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

He is a former president of the Incorporated Association of Organists. He has been awarded honorary fellowships by the Royal College of Organists, the Royal School of Church Music and the Guild of Church Musicians, and an honorary doctorate by the University of Huddersfield. He was awarded the British Empire Medal in the King’s first Birthday Honours.