Thomas Hawkes - Cirencester International Organ Festival

Home Ground Advantage: Thomas Hawkes on the Willis-Harrison at Cirencester

Thomas Hawkes knows this organ better than anyone. As organist and choirmaster at Cirencester Parish Church, he plays the four-manual Harrison & Harrison instrument day to day — a 63-stop rebuild completed in 2009 that kept around thirty surviving Father Willis pipes from the original 1895 instrument. Playing a recital on it for the International Organ Festival is a different kind of pressure: this time people are coming specifically to hear what it can do.

Hawkes came up through Ely Cathedral and the University of York before posts at St Edmundsbury, St David's Cathedral in Wales, and a year at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg. His repertoire spans Bach trio sonatas and the Passacaglia through to Romantic heavyweights like Mendelssohn and Vierne, with orchestral transcriptions thrown in for good measure. He has broadcast on BBC Wales and given recitals at venues including St Bride's on Fleet Street.

The Cirencester festival draws international competitors and recitalists each year, and having the church's own organist on the bill is a nod to what is already resident here.

Tickets via TicketSource; check the festival programme for pricing.

Friday 14 August 2026 · Parish Church of St John Baptist, Market Place, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 2NX · 7:30pm