John Kitchen was until August 2014 a Senior Lecturer in Music and University Organist in the University of Edinburgh. He conducts the Edinburgh University Singers, is Edinburgh City Organist with duties at the Usher Hall, and Director of Music at Old Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church. He gives many solo recitals both in the UK and further afield, and plays regularly with several ensembles, covering a wide range of musical styles. In addition, he is much in demand as a continuo player, accompanist, lecturer, examiner, adjudicator, writer and reviewer, and recording artist.

Andrew McCrea studied organ at the Royal College of Music and is a graduate of London University. He continued his organ studies at Amsterdam Conservatorium, where he studied with Jacques van Oortmerssen, and at postgraduate level at the University of Reading. He is now Academic Director of the Royal College of Organists, in which post he holds responsibility for the College’s examination programme, its scholarly publications (he is the editor of the annual journal), and its library and archive. He also holds a teaching post in the academic studies department at the Royal College of Music. He has given papers at international conferences and published a number of articles on organ-related topics for journals such as the Journal of the British Institute of Organ Studies (of which journal he was guest editor in 2004) and the RCO Journal. He contributed an article on British organ music to the Cambridge Companion to the Organ (CUP, 1998) and was co-editor of The Nordic-Baltic Organ Book (GOArt, 2003). He has held several appointments as a church organist, and as a recitalist has appeared in concerts both at home and overseas.

Barbara Owen holds degrees in organ performance and musicology from Westminster Choir College and Boston University, and has studied in Germany and Italy. She is the author of numerous periodical and anthology articles and entries in The New Grove Dictionary of Music. Books include The Organ in New England, E. Power Biggs: Concert Organist, The Registration of Baroque Organ Music, The Organ Music of Johannes Brahms and The Great Organ of Methuen. Music director of the First Religious Society of Newburyport, Massachusetts from 1963 to 2002 and Librarian of the A.G.O. Organ Library at Boston University from 1985 to 2012, she is currently active as a church organist, lecturer and consultant. She has served the American Guild of Organists as a Regional Councillor and Dean, is a Past President of the Organ Historical Society, and a Trustee of Methuen Memorial Music Hall.

Iain Quinn is Assistant Professor of Organ at The Florida State University. He studied at The Juilliard School, the University of Hartford (BM summa cum laude) and the Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University (MM) and was as a Doctoral Fellow at the University of Durham (PhD historical musicology). He holds the diplomas of Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and the Royal Schools of Music (with distinction), and is the recipient of a Winston Churchill Fellowship. During 2011 he was a Visiting Composer at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and in 2012 a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He has held church appointments in Durham, New York and Connecticut, and from 2005–2010 served as Director of Cathedral Music & Organist at the Cathedral of St John (Episcopal), Albuquerque, New Mexico. As an organist and conductor he has released 11 CDs on the Chandos, Hyperion, Paulus and Raven labels, and has performed in the UK, USA, Europe, Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, Iceland, Japan and Russia. He has recently completed editions of the previously unpublished organ works and early Christmas cantata of Samuel Barber (G. Schirmer), and the complete organ works of Carl Czerny (two volumes, A-R Editions).

Nicholas Thistlethwaite has written extensively on the history and use of the English organ; he also acts as an organ consultant specializing in the restoration of historic instruments. Dr Thistlethwaite is an Anglican priest and currently Sub Dean and Precentor of Guildford Cathedral.