My friend and colleague Simon Clarkson, who has died of cancer aged 61, was an outstanding organist and could easily have built a bigger playing career. However, he preferred a broader musical life with a strong commitment to teaching. A quiet, modest and witty man, his knowledge was encyclopedic and his curiosity boundless.
Simon was born of Scottish ancestry in Preston, Lancashire, to Roy Clarkson, a clerical officer, and Jean (nee Wilson), a journalist with the Lancashire Evening Post. After Queen Elizabeth’s grammar school, Blackburn, he won a scholarship to Edinburgh University in 1983. There he studied with the composer Kenneth Leighton, an enduring influence, who wrote him a three-word reference for his first job: “Snap him up!” He also encountered the Viennese émigré composer Hans Gál, and championed the organ music of Leighton and Gál for the rest of his life.
In 1985 Simon was a finalist in the National Young Organist of the Year competition, and by the time he graduated had become a fellow of the Royal College of Organists. While in Edinburgh Simon was organ scholar at St Mary’s Cathedral, assisting Dennis Townhill in playing for services, concerts and broadcasts, and touring the US with the cathedral choir in 1984. Winning the university’s Anderson organ prize facilitated postgraduate study in Paris and Caen in north-west France.
Simon’s teaching career began in 1987 as assistant director of music at Rossall school in Fleetwood, Lancashire, and he went on to be director of music at St Lawrence college, Ramsgate (1998-2003), and Giggleswick school, Yorkshire (2004-06), and then head of academic music and organist at Sherborne school for girls (2006-21). He was an inspiring and caring mentor to many young musicians and toured widely as an ABRSM examiner between 1999 and 2026.
Simon gave recitals at Westminster Abbey and at cathedrals at home and abroad. His own music was elegantly crafted and lyrical: his anthem Prevent Us, O Lord was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 from Chester Cathedral in 1995. Two organ pieces are published in the Manchester Organ Album: the Improvisation on “Dream Angus” won second prize in the 2022 Manchester Organ composition competition and has its roots in a Scottish folk song Simon’s grandmother sang to him in childhood.
Simon faced his illness courageously, and continued to play for church services up to within a fortnight of his death.
He is survived by his partner, Scott McDonald.
