Winter Festival 3 - An Advent Organ Recital

Thomas Allery (organ)

The Temple Church's Director of Music explores the full tonal range of the famous four-manual Harrison & Harrison organ in a programme including Advent works and compositions by Olivier Messiaen.  This magnificent instrument was originally built in 1924 as a ballroom organ for Glen Tanar Castle in Scotland and installed in the church in 1954. 

Thomas Allery is Director of Music at Temple Church, appointed in 2023, where he directs the professional choirs, works with period orchestras, commissions new music, and leads a wide-ranging choral education and outreach programme for young musicians aged 7 to 21. Trained at the University of Oxford, the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Thomas specialises in organ, harpsichord and early keyboard music, with further study in early organ techniques in Groningen supported by the Eric Thompson Trust. A sought-after continuo player, he performs regularly with leading early music ensembles, including The Sixteen, and is a founding member of the award-winning Ensemble Hesperi.

In 2024 he was appointed Professor of Basso Continuo at the Royal College of Music, where his teaching and research focus on historical performance practice and pedagogy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.