Our Ambassadors in the UK

Simon Lindley held posts at St Albans Cathedral and St Albans School before moving to Yorkshire over thirty years ago. He is Organist of Leeds Parish Church and Leeds Town Hall. He has served as President of both the RCO and the IAO and has an extensive discography as soloist, accompanist, orchestral organist and choral conductor. He is Secretary of the Church Music Society, Chairman of the Ecclesiastical Music Trust and a trustee of  several other major charities.

A Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and of Trinity College of Music he is the recipient of an honorary doctorate of Leeds Metropolitan University and has fellowships of the Guild of Church Musicians and the Royal School of Church Music. The son of an Anglican priest and a writer, Simon was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford and the Royal College of Music. A number of his sacred compositions and carol arrangements enjoy regular performance in quires and places where they sing and he contributed much liturgical material to New English Praise [2006], a supplement to The New English Hymnal.

Margaret Phillips

Among Britain's most outstanding concert organists and teachers, Margaret Phillips made her début at the Royal Festival Hall and soon gained an international reputation as a soloist, playing at concert halls and cathedrals throughout Europe and in the USA, Australia and Mexico. She has appeared frequently as a continuo player and accompanist with such ensembles as the BBC Singers and The Sixteen, and her CD recordings, which include the complete organ works of Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns and Stanley, have been widely praised.

Recognizing her debt to her own teachers, who included Marie-Claire Alain and the late Ralph Downes, Margaret Phillips now devotes a substantial part of her time to teaching and other activities in the organ world. Alongside her busy career as a player, she is Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music in London. In 1994, Margaret Phillips and her husband founded the English Organ School and Museum in former chapel premises in Milborne Port, Somerset, where they have a small collection of organs by English organ builders from the eighteenth century to the present day.