Organics features the combination of harp and organ as the starting point for exciting and diverse combinations of instruments and voices.
Rupert Gough and Cecily Beer are both highly experienced solo and ensemble performers. Whilst enjoying bringing organ and harp together in churches and concerts halls with pipe organs, Organics also seeks to demonstrate how a modern ‘virtual’ organ can bring the sounds of a large cathedral organ into any venue and therefore a wider audience.
Cecily Beer has been Resident Harpist at The Waldorf Hotel, Covent Garden since 2014, and enjoys a varied freelance music career. Alongside playing for high profile events at venues such as Blenheim Palace, Goodwood Estate and National Trust properties, she has performed on separate occasions for the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Princess Anne, and a 60th birthday concert for King Charles III at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She has performed all over the world, including as guest recitalist in Kuwait City and has taken part in broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio London, Classic FM, and several television musical appearances. On the concert platform she has performed Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp in The Shipley Festival, Debussy’s Danses Sacrée et Profane for harp solo and strings at St Martin in the Fields, and Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker at Cadogan Hall.
Cecily is very passionate about choral music and is a professional alto singer in the Choir of St Bartholomew the Great in West Smithfield. As a harpist she specialises in music for harp and choir and has featured on a number of CD recordings including The Pearl of Freedom by Joanna Marsh, recorded with The London Mozart Players; new works Odyssey and I Remember by Lydia Kakabadse featured on ‘Ithaka’ released on the Divine Art label.
Rupert Gough has been Director of Choral Music and College Organist at Royal Holloway, University of London, since 2005. He is also Organist and Director of Music at London’s oldest surviving church, St Bartholomew the Great, which maintains a professional choir. At Royal Holloway, Rupert has developed the choral programme to include weekly choral recitals, conducting courses for undergraduates, frequent new choral commissions and has transformed the Chapel Choir into an elite group of 24 choral scholars.
Rupert has a discography of over 50 recordings as organist and conductor with labels from Hyperion to Decca Classics. He is particularly in demand working with contemporary composers, most recently with Ola Gjeilo and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. As an organist, he has performed widely as both soloist and in ensemble in concerts across Europe, the USA, Far East and Russia. As an organ teacher he has a legacy of former students now working in cathedrals, conservatoires and winning international organ competitions. Rupert is a regular reviewer of organ recordings and has had a number of editions and arrangements published by OUP, Edition Peters and Carus Verlag.