David Bowie – organists’ tributes

The death of David Bowie at the weekend saddened fans world-wide – people who had grown up with his music, and loved the man as musician and artist.

A couple of organists took the opportunity to pay their own tribute – Nicholas Freestone, organ scholar at St Albans Cathedral, posted this version of Bowie’s Life on Mars on YouTube, and was humbled and astonished at the millions of hits it received:

and Chris Nickol (above) also decided to play Life on Mars during the regular lunchtime organ recital at Kelvingrove Art Gallery, after hearing of the singer’s death on the morning news bulletins.

“It was the strangest thing. People literally started coming out of the little corridors and all the galleries” said Gordon Wilson, in the audience, who captured the event on his mobile phone. “People just suddenly appeared. In the main concourse, people just stopped. You could still hear kids running around – but people were just in rapture.”

“It was so amazing. I’ve never heard Bowie like that before. The man just played a blinder. I was welling up and I could see people beside me welling up – and it was just crazy.”

You can see and hear this performance (which has also gone viral on the internet) via BBC News Scotland.

A demonstration, I think, of how we organists, and the organ, can mark moments in public history, in a way no other musician or instrument can.  (Not to mention the musicianship required to create an arrangement of a piece that isn’t exactly standard repertoire at the drop of a hat.)

(picture of Christopher Nickol from bearsdenchoir.co.uk)