Andrew Fletcher

Andrew Fletcher (b.1950) is a Midlands-based church musician, choral director, teacher, composer, arranger and concert organist who regularly gives recitals, masterclasses and choral workshops both in England and the USA.

Andrew Fletcher was educated in Birmingham and at Keble College, Oxford, where he was organ scholar. At the age of 20 he became a prize-winning Fellow of the Royal College of Organists; he also holds their Choir-Training Diploma and is a Fellow of the London College of Music in organ performance.

His reputation as a choir-trainer was established at St. Mary's, Warwick, where he was Director of Music for eight years. Under his direction the choir made numerous foreign tours, broadcast on TV and radio, and recorded on the Abbey, Chevron and CBS Masterworks labels.

Since 1985 he has pursued a free-lance career in his home town of Birmingham and is much in demand as a teacher of piano, organ and paperwork, as a recitalist and keyboard accompanist, and as a composer and arranger. He is presently Director of Music at St. Thomas's, Stourbridge (which maintains an all-male choral tradition), and directs the Solihull Choral Society. He is also President of the Birmingham Organists' Association and Chairman of the RSCM Area Committee.

He is a regular recitalist in England and has performed in such venues as St. Paul's, Canterbury, Coventry, Hereford, Wells and Bristol cathedrals, the abbeys of Tewkesbury, Ampleforth, Waltham and Bath, Southwell Minster, Birmingham and Kidderminster Town Halls, Hull City Hall, and Victoria Hall, Hanley.

He has toured extensively in the United States, giving recitals, master classes and choral workshops at venues in New York, Hartford CT, Methuen MA, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia PA, (yes, he did get to play a solo on the famous Wanamaker organ!), Baton Rouge LA and Arab AL. His CD recording of late-romantic organ music (St. Mary's, Warwick), has received great critical acclaim and it is hoped that two further recordings, made at Birmingham Oratory and Riverside Church, New York, may eventually be available.

As a composer he has answered a number of commissions, both organ and choral, for England and the USA, and many of his works are published by the RSCM, Oecumuse, Kevin Mayhew and Oxford University Press.