It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the launch of the Pipeworks Festival 2025. Founded as the Dublin International Organ Festival in1980, Pipeworks has brought many internationally renowned performers, teachers and scholars of the organ to Dublin, as well as showcasing the best of indigenous talent, venues and instruments.   

This year’s festival opens with a first for us: we are going to the movies! I am thrilled that my esteemed friend and colleague Stuart Nicholson, ably assisted by Pipeworks’ new chair Harry Meehan, will be bringing us a selection of block-busting film scores on the Willis organ of St Patrick’s Cathedral. Stuart has made a considerable reputation for himself internationally as an arranger and performer of this repertoire, and this event promises to be a uniquely engaging one. 

The Mornington Singers have long been a byword in Dublin for choral excellence. This multiple award-winning chamber choir, directed by renowned vocal trainer Orla Flanagan, began life as a group of TCD graduates who wished to continue singing together after college. The group is no stranger to us, having featured in several previous festivals, and it is a great pleasure to welcome them back in the beautiful surroundings of Christ Church Cathedral. 

Our international lineup of organists begins with a lunchtime concert by Claudia Grinnell, brilliant young English organist and choir trainer, recently appointed Director of Music at Bury St Edmonds Cathedral. It is a great pleasure once again to be co-presenting this recital with Sandford recitals, and her programme will showcase the fine, recently restored three manual instrument there. 

Martin Baker is universally hailed as one of the great organists of the age. A former Master of the Music at Westminster Cathedral, he has more recently devoted himself to an international solo recital career. His recital in Whitefriars will include an improvisation, a discipline in which he especially excels.  

John Butt has become an incarnation of excellence and innovation in the world of period performance. A former organ scholar of Kings College, Cambridge, he has pursued parallel academic and performing careers, his ensemble, The Dunedin Consort, becoming a household name. In another valued partnership, he plays the Goetze and Gwynn instrument in the Public Theatre of Trinity College. 

We are delighted to be once more returning to St Michael’s Church, Dún Laoghaire as the guests of the venerable recital series, which is our longest-standing partnership, and equally delighted to be welcoming Anna-Victoria Baltrusch, multiple international prizewinning German virtuoso, in what promises to be a thrilling conclusion to this year’s festival.
 

David Leigh, Artistic Director