A NEW charity which aims to install recycled organs in schools to encourage young people to learn to play has already attracted 13 pupils at one.

The charity, Organs for Schools, founded by Keith Simpson, was launched at Liverpool Cathedral in April. The trustees include the Organist of Liverpool Cathedral since 1980, Professor Ian Tracey, and the CEO of the Royal College of Organists, Sir Andrew Parmley.

Four schools have already received organs. Three more are on the waiting list.

Mr Simpson told the Church Times: “I want to give back to society. I’d like to think that the generation that follows will have people who might enjoy learning to play the organ from an early age.”

The Bluecoat School, Liverpool, already had two pipe organs, and the Young Organist Scholarship Trust (YOST) has begun funding training for three pupils. “The children were talking to each other, inspiring each other, and more children wanted to learn to play,” Mr Simpson said. He donated an electronic organ to the school, and now 13 pupils are learning to play.

“I went recently to an organ recital from ten of the 13 pupils, and they played Messiaen, which I can’t even play,” Mr Simpson said. “They are being instructed to a very high standard. Two of them have gone on to become organ scholars at Oxford and Cambridge since the scheme started.”

The cost of an organ is between £1000 to £2000, including delivery to the school. Mr Simpson hopes that the charity can now secure funding through donations and grants, besides sourcing used organs. These need to be less than 20 years old to ensure that spare parts can be obtained.

Mr Simpson is in touch with companies that are looking out for used organs “within a budget that suits us”.

He said that the decision to donate organs to schools rather than churches was deliberate. “At a school, the setting is quite different from a church, in that the pupils compete with each other, and that gives them an incentive to practise more and learn to a much higher standard.”

He realised, too, that, while there were peripatetic teachers teaching a range of musical instruments, “nowhere does anybody teach the organ unless there is an organ in the school, and that’s something I’d like to try and put right.”

Mr Simpson has played the organ since first hearing its sound at a school assembly at the age of 11. “I’m 70 this year, and it’s been the most wonderful hobby. . . I don’t know anybody that starts to play the organ that isn’t still playing when they reach my age; it’s something that stays with them throughout their life.”

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