Lionel Bourne
On Easter Day we welcome Lionel Bourne as Organist and Master of Music. Lionel comes to St John’s after fourteen fruitful years as Organist and Director of Music at St John the Divine, Kennington. With his wife Jill, he has lived locally since the early 1990s and is very familiar with our church and its music tradition.
An experienced church musician, Lionel has held a number of organist posts over many years and has also enjoyed a career as teacher and BBC Music Researcher.
Lionel looks forward to joining the team at St John’s, to meeting people and contributing to the life of our community.
I have been reading about Lionel’s mission to reach out to multicultural communities in deprived areas with regard to children and young people learning the organ. I will be President of the Bristol Association in 23/24, and this will coincide with the reopening of The Beacon (formerly Colston) Hall, and the reinstatement of the fully restored Harrison concert organ within the Hall, which is the headquarters of the Bristol Music Hub (aka Bristol Plays Music…we hope that doesn’t exclude singing!)
I’m trying to get Wayne Marshall interested (an old friend from Windsor days), but I would very much welcome the chance to chat with Lionel about this before I start attending any planning meetings.