Biography
I’ve always been musical! I can certainly remember singing in both the school and church choirs from an early age and I’m told that I used to sing at the top of my voice walking to and from school.
At first, organ music was just something that I heard or sang to in church but when I was around 9 years old I heard the Hammond organ being played for the first time, by well-known UK organist Ena Baga. Inspired by the Hammond’s big sound, I sat down at my grandmother’s old Kimball harmonium, pulled out some stops, pumped the pedals and started to bash away at the keys. I’m sure it must have sounded awful, but no one ever told me to stop! A short while later, my older sister started work at a local music school and received free piano lessons. When she practised, I would sometimes ‘sit in’, watch and listen, then simply sit at the piano and play what she had been working on. This playing was all by ear at first, of course, but I soon started to read the music too, making the connection between the ‘dots’ and the keys. The lessons were soon transferred to me and I then received a very strict, ‘classical’ piano education. After three years, I’d reached Grade 6 but the electronic organ was about to make a major reappearance in my life.
A Hammond was being played each week at a local club and my Dad took me along. The organist was a real gentleman by the name of Cliff Mulley, and he kindly let me sit right behind him at his Hammond T100 to listen, watch and learn. One evening he told me about a Hammond Organ Showcase concert at the famous Dome concert hall in Brighton, starring Keith Beckingham and George Blackmore, and featuring the fabulous and rare Hammond X66 organ. My Dad took me along and that was that, I was hooked! A month later I was back at the Dome again, this time listening to Harold Smart, Douglas Reeve and Jackie Brown at the latest Thomas organs. I then just knew I had to start playing properly.
Demonstrating Kawai organs in 1977.
I was about 13 when I first played a tiny Hammond Cadette in Lyon and Hall’slarge Brighton music shop. After listening for a few minutes, one of their organ teachers, the famous UK cinema organist Bobby Pagan, moved me across to the much larger T200 model. My playing attracted something of a crowd and, spotting the mileage in this, the manager told me I could come in and play whenever I wanted. I took him up on the offer – every Saturday! I started going to all the local organ concerts and also visited the rival local organ shops. They invited me to come in to play as well.
About this time, Dad discovered a Gulbransen President organ at a hotel in Hove and asked the manager if I could have a go. He wasn’t keen but reluctantly agreed to let me have five minutes at the organ. I ended up playing for over twenty minutes and, less than six weeks later, I was appointed resident organist. It was clear that I needed to learn a lot more music and also practise more, so Dad bought a Gulbransen Pacemaker for me to play at home, joking that ‘I could pay him back when I turned professional’. This practice soon affected my piano playing and it was time to ‘come clean’ with my piano teacher. She was far from happy, but I nevertheless continued on with piano, working my way up through the higher grades, as well as having organ mentoring – in straight, theatre and electronic styles.
I’d often heard Brian Sharp play on the BBC Radio 2 programme ‘The Organist Entertains’ and went to see him live in concert in 1971. After the show, my Dad spoke to Arthur and Peter Butler, the UK Gulbransen importers, saying that I had one at home. They promptly sat me down at the new Theatrum model and I played a few tunes for them. I guess they must have been impressed as they filed my name away for later. I also got to ‘swap notes’ with Brian, not realising that he, as with many of my then ‘idols’, was to become a firm friend in years to come.
My first real job in the music business was as ‘Saturday Boy’ in the same music shop where I first played that little organ. The combination of playing at the hotel and working in the shop was to carry on throughout my remaining years at school, but I still carried on with my piano and organ studies. In 1973 I was appointed resident organist at another, much larger hotel, and bought my own Hammond and Leslie to use there. I also, as promised, paid Dad in full for the Gulbransen Pacemaker – the princely sum of £375 - but I then promptly sold it on for £450! It was around this time that I started to play organ concerts, on the London Granada cinema organs for the Theatre Organ Club, and for local organ societies on various makes of electronics.
A local TV and radio reporter had taken an interest in my music and had interviewed me on the air a couple of times. This coverage led to a few half-hour organ music slots on BBC Radio Brighton and they eventually asked me to co-present ‘At The Console’, with John Mann, Douglas Reeve and Bobby Pagan. This was to be a new light organ music programme that became very popular on local radio, eventually running for over ten years. Some of those broadcasts were copied to other BBC local stations and also to BBC Radio 2, where Robin Richmond used them on ‘The Organist Entertains’.
In August 1977, Peter Butler proved that he had kept my name on file, by calling me out of the blue and asking me to work for him for a week at the London Music Trade Fair, demonstrating their new line of Kawai organs and synthesizers. This went very well and as a result he invited me to do more work for the company - providing I could drive. I couldn’t at the time, so I had to learn – and fast! Within two days of passing my driving test, I started my Kawai travels by driving up from Newhaven to Leeds for a major organ extravaganza, and I joined Kawai full time in January 1978 as UK Product Specialist. In February that year I attended the Frankfurt Trade Fair. The Kawai engineers told me to try out the new prototype models E550 organ and S100P synthesizer, then asked me what I thought of them. They wanted to know if and how I’d change things. Being very ‘green’, and not knowing that you didn’t simply ‘wade in’ with the engineers, I just spoke my mind, but at least I gave reasons for everything I said. My suggestions were all taken up and the final products sold like hot cakes. I was then officially ‘on the R&D team’, often being seconded directly to Kawai, travelling all over Europe and also to Japan. I helped to design some of the company's major products, culminating with the SR series organs.
My daughter Kerry in concert.
I’m a family man at heart and, in the mid 1980's, I decided to take some time out from the music business while my daughter and son grew to school age. Wanting to work locally, I took a job working with computers at the Sealink ferry company at Newhaven. Subsequent career moves led to my involvement with the clearance of freight traffic through UK Customs at the port, and I ended up ‘computerising’ much of the workload for the companies I worked for.
In 1990 I was asked to join the Lowrey UK demonstration team as a freelance member, and started working with their NT series organs like the Heritage and MX2. In early 1993, I decided to return to music on a full-time basis, building up a teaching practice, and also starting to play again on the electronic organ club circuit, using the latest Lowrey instruments. Having written a few articles for Keyboard Player magazine, I was asked to do some more, and soon became one of their principal reviewers and writers.
I’ve always regarded musical education as being of great importance, and I now concentrate on teaching piano, organ and keyboard, both privately and in schools, and also at Bonners Music in Eastbourne. I’ve had the pleasure of taking many, many students from their first few notes, right up through the grades and some of them have gone on to Diploma level or have become professionals themselves. I also teach Music Technology - the use of computers, high-tech equipment and the like. I write a series called Computer Music for Keyboard Player, and some of my students have now taken university degrees in the subject. I’ve also written a whole series about music exams, called Making The Grade and, just to show that you can teach an old dog new tricks, I decided, as part of the work for that series, to take some of the new Diplomas from the London College of Music. Hard work, but wonderfully fulfilling, and I’m now working on what’s turning out to be a very long and extremely detailed Fellowship thesis!
In 2003, after around 30 years of playing concerts, I decided that the travelling involved was getting a bit much and decided to call it a day. My very last concert, at the end of that year was, quite appropriately, for the Sussex Organ Society, the very same club where I started my concert career, albeit then under its original name of the Southern Organs Keyboard Club. So, I don’t play any public organ concerts these days, but I still do the occasional private gig, and am also on hand to play for weddings, christenings and funerals at local churches. Most of my organ playing is now just for fun, either on my trusty vintage Hammond and Leslie or on some of my students’ fine instruments.
As well as being a regular contributor to the BBC's 'The Organist Entertains' programme, I have recorded three albums. The first was released in Japan only, and featured the Kawai T30. The second, long since deleted but still occasionally seen on eBay, was 'Wonderland by Night', on the Kawai DX900 organ that I helped to design. The third, still available from me on cassette only at the bargain price of £6 plus p&p, is 'The Swing of Things', featuring another of my ‘babies’, the Kawai SR6 organ, plus various Kawai keyboards and Kawai grand piano. Having recently recorded some new material for on-line postings, it’s been suggested that I produce a couple of new CDs, and this is actively being worked on right now.
In recent years, I have become a regular contributor and moderator on various web forums, in particular The Organ Forum and the Yahoo groups for Hammond and Lowrey organs, as well as the Crafty Music Forum and the Yamaha Keyboard Owners group. I also occasionally post on the Sibelius and Cubase chat pages. You’ll find me there under my screen name of andyg.
My taste in music is very wide-ranging - anything from Gregorian chant, gentle adagios for strings or romantic piano, through Big Band, the Beatles and Abba, right up to some of the latest dance tracks and chart hits. I’ve always had a bit of a ‘thing’ about music from films and shows, too. However, I still consider myself to be an 'organ nut' at heart. Though most of my time revolves around pianos and keyboards these days, I still enjoy playing just about anything that has keyboards and pedals, whenever I get the chance. Big or small, old or new, pipes or electronic, I get the same buzz out of the instrument now as I did when I first heard it around 45 years ago.
Going straight - Playing for a wedding.