The Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick has been awarded a £5,000 grant by the Ouseley Church Music Trust towards its Organ Scholarship.
The Ouseley Church Music Trust is a charitable trust dedicated to promoting and maintaining high standards of choral worship in the Church of England, the Church in Wales and the Church of Ireland. It supports this work principally through grants to cathedrals, choral foundations, parish churches, choir schools and other organisations involved in church music. Its grants can contribute towards musicians, scholarships and bursaries, chorister development, musical training and other projects that directly support excellence in worship.
An organ scholarship provides an important bridge between musical education and professional church music. For the postholder, it offers the opportunity to gain practical experience of accompanying services, working with a choir, preparing repertoire and developing the wider skills required of a church musician. At St Mary’s, the organ scholar plays a crucial role in training the choristers – working especially with the youngest members to establish good practice and skills – as well as carrying increasing responsibility for accompaniments and conducting the choir. At the same time, offering an organ scholarship is an important part of St Mary’s goal to be a beacon of early-career musical training, ensuring that talented young organists have opportunities to develop within the rich practical environment of a busy choral church.
“We are extremely grateful to the Ouseley Church Music Trust for this generous support,” said the Director of Music, Oliver Hancock. “An organ scholarship is of real benefit both to the individual scholar and to the wider musical life of St Mary’s. It gives an emerging organist the opportunity to gain substantial practical experience, while bringing additional musical energy and expertise to our worship and to the work of the choir.” Recent organ scholars at St Mary’s have gone on to significant musical roles in schools and liturgical settings, including Dulwich College and HM Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, and alongside further academic study in Newcastle.
The grant represents another significant investment in the future of music at St Mary’s, helping to nurture the next generation of church musicians while strengthening the musical ministry of the church today.
You can find out more about the work of the Ouseley Church Music Trust at https://www.ouseleytrust.org.uk/
