Our magnificent organ by Harrison and Harrison is one of the things we won’t be able to take with us when we vacate Leicester Cathedral for the forthcoming building works in January 2022. This year's Summer Organ Festival is the last last opportunity to hear the instrument in concert before 2024. A complete performance of Widor’s Symphony No.5, including the famous Toccata concludes the series.
Christopher Ouvry-Johns was Head Chorister at Derby Cathedral and a Choral Scholar at Jesus College, Cambridge, before taking up the position of Assistant Choirmaster at Osnabrück Cathedral in Germany. He studied Church Music at the Robert Schumann College of Music in Düsseldorf, gaining first class marks in Organ and Piano and a distinction in Choral Conducting, before returning to the UK to pursue doctoral research in Linguistics at Durham University. Whilst in Durham, he was Conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra and, in his final year, Cathedral Organ Scholar.
In the autumn of 2006, Christopher moved to Yorkshire to take up the newly created post of Choral Director in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Leeds, where he was responsible for the delivery of the singing curriculum in the Catholic primary schools of Bradford and conducted the Bradford Boys’ Choir. As an organist, he accompanied cathedral and diocesan choirs both at regular services and at national and international events, including radio and television broadcasts, and in January 2010 won all the top prizes in the examinations for the Royal College of Organists’ Associateship Diploma (ARCO). He was Deputy Chorus Master of Leeds Philharmonic Society, assisting in the preparation of the choir for performances conducted by David Hill (among others) and Conductor of Tees Valley Youth Orchestra.
Christopher has been Director of Music at Leicester Cathedral since January 2011. In this capacity he is responsible for the musical provision both at regular choral services and at the many diocesan and civic occasions to which the Cathedral is host. He has twice conducted the Cathedral Choir in the presence of HM The Queen and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh (at the start of the Diamond Jubilee tour in March 2012 and at the Royal Maundy Service in 2017) and for BBC Television’s Easter Sunday broadcast, which came live from Leicester Cathedral in 2014. He was also responsible for the musical provision at the ceremonies surrounding the Reinterment of King Richard III in the spring of 2015, watched by over 350 million people worldwide, including the premiere of Judith Bingham’s anthem Ghostly Grace, which was recorded, along with other repertoire from those services on the CD He lieth under this stone. He has led workshops on English Church Music in Germany and directed the RSCM Cathedral Course in Rochester in 2016. He is a trustee of the Church Music Society and serves on the committee of the Cathedral Organists’ Association.
When time permits, Christopher continues to enjoy engagements as a bass soloist and as an orchestral conductor, most recently in performances of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite by Dunelm Sinfonia in London. He has also conducted the Graff Orchestra of England in liturgical performances of works by Schubert, Mozart and Fauré and of his own orchestral hymn arrangements, one of which appears in two collections published by Novello.