Simon Clarkson obituary

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 to