Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically and melodically he employs a system he called modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from the systems of material his early compositions and improvisations generated. He wrote music for chamber ensembles and orchestra, voice, solo organ, and piano, and experimented with the use of novel electronic instruments developed in Europe during his lifetime.
Patrick Joseph Caulfield,, was an English painter and printmaker known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of photorealism within a pared-down scene. Examples of his work are Pottery and Still Life Ingredients.
Sir George William John Benjamin, CBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. He is also a conductor, pianist and teacher. He is well known for operas Into the Little Hill (2006), Written on Skin (2009–2012) and Lessons in Love and Violence (2015–2017)—all with librettos by Martin Crimp. In 2019, critics at The Guardian ranked Written on Skin as the second best work of the 21st-century.
Westminster Cathedral is the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. It is the largest Catholic church in the UK and the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster.
John Egerton Christmas Piper CH was an English painter, printmaker and designer of stained-glass windows and both opera and theatre sets. His work often focused on the British landscape, especially churches and monuments, and included tapestry designs, book jackets, screen-prints, photography, fabrics and ceramics. He was educated at Epsom College and trained at the Richmond School of Art followed by the Royal College of Art in London. He turned from abstraction early in his career, concentrating on a more naturalistic but distinctive approach, but often worked in several different styles throughout his career.
George Claude Leon Underwood was a British artist, although primarily known as a sculptor, printmaker and painter, he was also an influential teacher and promotor of African art. His travels in Mexico and West Africa had a substantial influence on his art, particularly on the representation of the human figure in his sculptures and paintings. Underwood is best known for his sculptures cast in bronze, carvings in marble, stone and wood and his drawings. His lifetime's work includes a wide range of media and activities, with an expressive and technical mastery. Underwood did not hold modernism and abstraction in art in high regard and this led to critics often ignoring his work until the 1960s when he came to be viewed as an important figure in the development of modern sculpture in Britain.
London has, alongside New York, been described as the cultural capital of the world. The culture of London concerns the music, museums, festivals, and lifestyle within London, the capital city of the United Kingdom. London is one of the world's leading business centres, renowned for its technological readiness and economic clout, as well as attracting the most foreign investment of any global city.
Dame Gillian Constance Weir is a New Zealand-British organist.
Chichester Festival Theatre is a theatre and Grade II* listed building situated in Oaklands Park in the city of Chichester, West Sussex, England. Designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, it was opened by its founder Leslie Evershed-Martin in 1962. The smaller and more intimate Minerva Theatre was built nearby in 1989.
Amit Chaudhuri is a novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, singer, and music composer from India.
Jennifer Lucy Bate was a British concert organist. She is known for recording the complete organ works by Olivier Messiaen, guided by the composer, but also recorded, among others, English organ music, and the complete organ works of César Franck, Felix Mendelssohn and Peter Dickinson.
Jonathan Allen is a visual artist, writer, and magician based in London. His performance persona "Tommy Angel", is a fictitious evangelist and magician satirising the genre of Gospel Magic, who Allen portrays in a variety of media including performance, photography, video, and writing.
John Walter Atherton Hussey was an English priest of the Church of England who had a great fondness for the arts, commissioning a number of musical compositions and visual art for the church as well as amassing his own collection.
Mark Gasser is a British concert pianist.
Matthew Odell is an American pianist. He has performed as both a solo and collaborative pianist, performing at a variety of locations throughout the United States including New York's Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Paris, Nice, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Taipei, and Kyoto.
David Remfry is a British painter and curator. He served as the Eranda Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy Schools from 2016 to 2018 and a Judge for the Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award 2021. In 2023 he coordinated the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. A retrospective of Remfry’s work, curated by Dr Gerardine Mulcahy-Parker, is planned for 2025 at Beverley Art Gallery, East Riding.
Simon Shaw-Miller is emeritus professor of history of art at the University of Bristol. He is a specialist in the relationships between art and music in the modern period.
Clive Blackmore Barda OBE, FRSA is a London-based, British freelance photographer best known for capturing the performances of classical musicians and artists of the stage. During his career spanning over five decades, Barda has created a collection of over a million photographs of performers, composers, and conductors.
Willem Tanke is an organist and acclaimed recitalist known for his interpretations of works by J.S. Bach, Max Reger, Olivier Messiaen and contemporary composers. In addition he is noted for his own musical language as an improviser and a performing composer. As a teenager, he was drawn especially to wanting to play the organ by the religiously-inspired music of J.S. Bach and Olivier Messiaen, and also John Coltrane.
Monodie is a short composition for organ by French composer Olivier Messiaen.
