Stephen Farr

Stephen Farr is highly regarded among his generation of organists, performing a vast repertoire with considerable focus on contemporary works. He has performed at many of the major English cathedrals and in concertos with leading orchestras. He is the chief examiner of the Royal College of Organists and the music director at All Saints, Margaret Street. Farr also performs on the harpsichord as a continuo player in chamber music settings. In 2024, he played organ on the album William Byrd: The Great Service & English Anthems, backing the vocal group Alamire. Farr was born in London in 1967. He began his organ studies with Robert Munns and David Sanger before earning a scholarship to study with Piet Kee in the Netherlands and Hans Fagius in Denmark. Farr became an organ scholar at Clare College in Cambridge, earning degrees in music and musicology. In 1988, he was named the Royal College of Organists Performer of the Year and followed that with several international competition prizes. Farr held sub-organist posts at Christ Church Oxford and Winchester Cathedral before being appointed the organist at Guildford Cathedral in 1999; he held this position until 2007. He went on to serve at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge and Worcester College in Oxford. In the late '90s, Farr accompanied the Winchester Cathedral Choir in a cycle of Charles Villiers Stanford's Sacred Choral Music. Farr has dedicated much of his programming to new music, premiering works by Poul Ruders, Thomas Hyde, and Francis Pott, among others. Farr commissioned David Briggs to write an organ symphony based on Maurice Duruflé's Requiem, debuting the work in 2004. From 2007 until 2020, Farr was the music director at St. Paul's Knightsbridge. In 2011, he premiered The Everlasting Crown, written for him by Judith Bingham, in his solo BBC Proms debut. In 2014, Farr earned his PhD at the University of Surrey on Bingham's organ and harpsichord compositions. He has worked primarily as a freelance musician since obtaining his doctorate, with a diverse repertoire spanning from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Farr has performed across Great Britain and beyond at illustrious venues such as Winchester Abbey and Cathedral and Notre Dame in Paris. As a concerto soloist, he has performed with many leading orchestras, including the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the Berlin Philharmonic. Farr has recorded for the Resonus, Hyperion, and Nimbus labels, among others, and his recordings are equally as varied as his performing career. He has issued several recordings of Bach's organ music as well as recordings of organ works by Kenneth Leighton (2016), Judith Bingham (2017), and James MacMillan (2020). Farr became chief examiner of the Royal College of Organists in 2017. He took up the music director post at All Saints, Margaret Street, in 2020. He has issued several albums as an organist in the 2020s, including a recording of the organ works of Francis Grier, and he joined the vocal group Alamire and its director David Skinner on a recording of music by William Byrd in 2024. ~ Keith Finke, Rovi