St Wilfrid’s Church in Harrogate will become one of the town’s main arts venues over the next two weeks.

The town's only grade one building is hosting a series of concerts as part of Harrogate Music Festival, which runs from June 26 to July 11.

The festival, one of several organised each year by the arts charity Harrogate International Festivals, features everything from pianist Yevgeny Sudbin to burlesque and comedian Alistair McGowan.

St Wilfrid’s, on Duchy Road, will stage a series of six events branded Gigs at Gaia, because they will be performed beneath Luke Jerram’s Gaia installation, which is an illuminated replica of Earth.

One of the concerts will be an organ recital by Anthony Gray, director of music at St Wilfrid’s and one of the leading lights in the local classical music scene.

Billed as ‘an epic, immersive organ experience’, the one-hour performance will include Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar, as well as works by Arvo Part and Olivier Messiaen that showcase the organ’s capacity for stillness and spiritual depth.

Anthony, 28, says he is keen to show the organ can “do more than Bach’s Tocatta in D minor” by playing a full kaleidoscope of sound.

Live concerts and liturgical music

Besides being an accomplished organist and directing the musical programme at St Wilfrid’s, Anthony is also deputy director of Harrogate Choral Society, artistic director of Halifax Choral Society and deputy organist at Leeds Cathedral.

His role at St Wilfrid’s, which he has held since 2019, involves overseeing the choir and liturgical music as well as arranging live concerts. The church hosts regular live events and has become the temporary home of Harrogate Choral Society.

It’s easy to overlook the contribution of local churches to live music and Anthony says Harrogate is lucky to have not only St Wilfrid’s but also places such as St Peter’s, whose director of music John Longstaff has a stellar CV and puts on high quality events, such as an English version of Bach's St Matthew's Passion at Easter. “It’s quite a rarity to have two parish churches doing the level of music we are doing,” he says.

One of the reasons St Wilfrid’s is proving popular as a venue is because of size. Its 400 capacity means it can cater for more people than the Wesley Centre and St Peter’s but it is considerably cheaper than the Royal Hall.

Anthony says his musical director role takes about one-and-a-half days a week. He also fits in his choral society role in Harrogate and Halifax as well as his organist duties at Leeds. He also teaches and composes —and has even composed musicals about Brexit and Donald Trump.

A vicar’s son who grew up in Blackburn, he says he’s the classic example of a chorister who took up the piano when his voice broke and later switched to the organ, which requires mastery of multiple keyboards, pedals and stop controls. 

Sadly the 1928 Harrison & Harrison pipe organ above the main entrance in St Wilfrid’s is broken. Repair work was valued at £850,000 three years ago. “I’d be amazed if it was under £1 million now,” says Anthony, who accepts that sort of money is unlikely to be found anytime soon.

But the digital organ bought from Newcastle Cathedral for about £30,000 as a stop-gap a few years ago can still make one hell of a sound, as Anthony’s concert on July 7 will demonstrate. Further details are available here.