Nicholas Jackson

Sir Nicholas Jackson has pursued a career of an organist, harpsichordist and composer. Initially it was thought that he might follow in the footsteps of his grandfather Sir T.G. Jackson Bt., architect of many buildings in Oxford including the Bridge of Sighs and the Examination Schools . Jackson was taken abroad on sketching tours to study architec... ture, and as a boy at Radley College, won a competition with a design for a theatre. However, on gaining an Organ Scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford, he read music and was a pupil of Edmund Rubbra. Later at the Royal Academy of Music he became an organ pupil of C.H. Trevor, learnt the harpsichord with George Malcolm and was a composition student of John Gardner. He then completed his organ and harpsichord studies in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt and received conducting lessons from Sir Adrian Boult. Jacksons compositions are written in a modern-romantic idiom admitting to the influences of Duruflé, Langlais and Messiaen. Besides the music on this recording, Nicholas Jacksons compositions include a quantity of organ and choral works, music for trumpet and organ (recorded for Naxos with Maurice Murphy, trumpet), An English Requiem, and two operas, The Reluctant Highwayman (produced by Broomhill Opera) and The Rose and the Ring (2014) adapting Scarlattis sonatas. Nicholas Jackson made his debut at the Wigmore Hall as a harpsichordist playing four Bach concertos with his own chamber orchestra, which subsequently recorded for RCA and thereafter performed frequently at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and elsewhere in London. In 1971 he became organist at St. Jamess Piccadilly, then at St. Lawrence Jewry-next-Guildhall in London before becoming Organist and Master of the Choristers at St. Davids Cathedral in Wales. As an organ recitalist he has regularly toured the USA, France, Germany, Spain and Croatia performing at Notre-Dame, Paris, the Royal Festival Hall and St. Pauls Cathedral in London, and at the Teatro Real in Madrid. He has frequently toured Spain giving trumpet ...Read More