00:00My name is Bill Hutchison, I'm one of the team of organists here in Kelvin Grove Art
00:25Galleries. I started in 1969 with my first formal organ recital arranged by the Glacial
00:33Society of Organists of which I'm not only a member, I'm also an honorary member now
00:41and I've been president twice in the past. I've been a lifelong organist since I was 12
00:46and I first had a go at this organ in 1964 when a member of staff here who was able to
00:59organise a trip for me to have a wee go in the evening and I became hooked. I did my first
01:07recital in 1969 and I'm now 510 recitals on the list since then. It's an original T.C. Lewis,
01:20it's been untouched, it's not been meddled with, it was very very well restored some years ago now
01:28and the beauty of it is that it's a fine example of Victorian organ building. It's very very versatile,
01:36you can play anything on it and in fact you can play anything from classical to what you could
01:43say was laughingly improper music. Fifty years ago it was Glasgow 800 and I had the recital on the 14th of
01:53May. Today, this is the 14th of May and it's also a Wednesday and it's Glasgow 850. Fifty years later,
02:02here we are. Sadly, the other organists who were along in that series are no longer with us so I'm
02:09the only survivor of the five players who played that season. Any recitals that stand out?
02:17That's very very tricky. I suppose my 50th anniversary in here because I'm playing a piece that was commissioned
02:25for me by the family and that was in 2019. That's when I've been playing here 50 years. I'm now 55 years.
02:34What events have you played at that? I played the weekend the Queen Mother had died and was lying in
02:41state and had to change my programme very swiftly and at the end I put in the national anthem. I was hoping
02:50for no applause and right enough there was none but there was a Royal Navy wedding party in and they
02:58stood to attention. So it was quite an interesting experience.
03:03There are quite a number of young people coming through and some very very skillful players who
03:17play in here and they play in Edinburgh and all over the place. It used to be there's maybe a couple of
03:23organ students in the academy in Glasgow, the Conservatoire, but there's now I believe 17.
03:29So there's a revival of interest. But it's quite a noisy building because there's hundreds of people.
03:36There's a sheer variety of tone and variety of pieces that you can play and you're entertaining,
03:44you're educating. It's not a place of worship so you couldn't get away with anything.
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