Organist and Choir & Organ contributor Douglas Hollick is holding a concert to celebrate his 75th birthday on Saturday October 26th at 8pm in the Chapel of Trinity College Cambridge in memory of friends and colleagues that have lost their lives to cancer. 

The programme will reflect his involvement with choral music, and the programme will start and end with choral works by Charles Wood and Stanford that link back to Douglas’s teenage and university years as singer and choir director.

Two of his current Cambridge students will be performing, Augustine Cox, organ scholar at Trinity, and Evie Perfect, organ scholar at Clare College. One of his last students at the end of 15 years teaching at the Birmingham Conservatoire, Ying Yue, will be playing piano music by Beethoven and Debussy.

For his instrument making, Hollick will bring his 1989 copy of the 1643 Ruckers Muselar virginal (pictured), on which he will play Buxtehude and will also play music by Jacques Duphly on the resident Rubio harpsichord. Douglas knew David Rubio very well, finished his last harpsichord for him when he was dying of cancer, and was playing the Trinity Rubio harpsichord in a concert the very day David died. Hollick will also play some Bach on the Metzler organ, on which he has recorded four CDs. 

Entry to the concert is free with all proceeds going to Maggie's Cambridge Cancer Care. Tickets available from this link.

Hollick writes of the concert's dedication:

'Those family and friends lost to cancer, or brain tumours: Both my wife’s parents, Frank and Winifred Beauchamp. Roy Truby, Dartington harpsichordist with whom I played concerts in the 1980s. Richard Marlow of Trinity College; Peter le Huray of St Catharine’s College; Selene Webb, Chapel administrator in Trinity College. Long time friend and colleague David Rubio, guitar, harpsichord and violin maker latterly of Cambridge. One of his early harpsichords is here in Trinity Chapel. Organ builders Peter Collins, Bill Drake, Martin Goetze and Dominic Gwynn. Stuart Spencer, dear friend, musician, scholar for whom I made a harpsichord in 1988, died too young at only 42, his harpsichord now in the new Tung Auditorium at Liverpool University. David Freeman, who introduced me to Czechoslovakia in 1991 with my concert in the first Prague Early Music Festival, and from which developed all my teaching, performing and recording for Czech Radio and Supraphon over there through the 1990s.'