Organ Recitals
Organ Recitals at St John's usually take place on Sundays at 6pm, prior to Evensong at 6:30pm.
You can read more about our current Organ Scholars below, and if you are interested in becoming an Organ Scholar, further information is available here.
Current Organ Scholars
Alex Robson
Alex Robson is the Herbert Howells Organ Scholar at St John’s College, where he is in his second year studying Music. Alongside accompanying the daily services at St John’s, he has performed for live broadcasts, recordings, and international tours with the College Choir, recently including concerts at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and the Tivoli Vredenburg, Utrecht.
In 2021, Alex was Organ Scholar at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, where he played for services and special events. In 2024, he was awarded Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), receiving the Turpin and Durrant, Harding and Durrant, and Dr F. J. Read Prizes.
Alongside the organ, Alex has played the piano and clarinet in the Kent Youth Wind Orchestra and Kent Country Youth Orchestra. He also regularly performs as a continuo keyboardist, recently including Bach’s St John Passion with the Cambridge Collegium Musicum.
Alex studies the organ with Ann Elise Smoot and the piano with Marie-Noëlle Kendall, and has performed as a solo recitalist across the south of England. His other interests include cross-country running and foreign languages.
Tingshuo Yang
Tingshuo Yang is a pianist, organist, and composer. Born in China in 2004, he showed an early passion for music. He studied piano in the UK from 2012 to 2016 at the Royal College of Music Junior Department and at the Conservatoire Luxembourg from 2017 to 2021. He received a music scholarship to Eton College in 2018. Since 2023, he has been the Junior Organ Scholar at the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, pursuing a BA in music.
He made his solo piano debut with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra in April 2019 and opened the ‘Young Luxembourgish Classical Talents’ recital series in Berlin in 2020. His debut piano album, J.S. Bach: Clavieruebung Part I: Partitas, was released on Luxembourg Classics in June 2024. In early July, it became the album of the week on Radio 100,7 in Luxembourg and received outstanding reviews from industry leading media, such as Pizzicato, which described the recordings as 'timelessly beautiful' and 'spontaneously creative', and hailed by Luc Boentges for its transparent nature, especially when dealing with the polyphony.
As an organist and composer, Tingshuo achieved his ARCO in organ playing in 2021 and was Highly Commended in the Northern Ireland International Organ Competition in 2023. He won first prize in the D’Overbroekes composition competition, was runner-up in the RCO Composition Competition, and was shortlisted for the BBC/NCEM Young Composers Award in 2024.
Tingshuo has received guidance from Geoffrey Govier, Jean Muller, Jenny Stern, Philip Scriven, Colin Walsh, and Claude Lenners. He was the organ scholar at the Charles Wood Festival in Armagh in 2023 and accompanies the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge for its daily services under Director of Music Christopher Gray.
Organists’ Review