Fanfare for Nottingham

Born in Beirut and trained at the Paris Conservatoire, the organist and composer Naji Hakim (*1955) has won numerous prizes both as a creative and as a performing artist. After having worked as an organist in Paris for many years, for example as successor to Olivier Messiaen at La Trinité, he has been composer-in-residence at the Royal Academy of Music in London since 2004. For the 100th anniversary of the Binns organ at the Albert Hall in Nottingham he was commissioned to write 'Fanfare for Nottingham'. The composer designed the work as 'a series of free and energetic variations on the melody of the hymn "Nottingham" accompanying a merry procession' – it has become a hymnic and effective work, a valuable addition to the organ repertoire.