Every year in June and July, All Saints presents Lunchtime Live – a series of seven recitals at 1:10pm every Thursday. The series has become renowned in Northamptonshire and beyond for attracting musicians of the highest calibre to perform on either the Walker Gallery Organ or the Hill & Son and Norman & Beard Chancel Organ, in the light acoustic which so captivated Sir Yehudi Menhuin: Nowhere in Europe or indeed the world have I played in a building that has better acoustics. They are absolutely perfect!   Recitals are given on Thursdays in June and July from 1:10pm until 2:00pm, and further details of all our Organ Recitals can be found at: www.organrecitals.com. Our Coffee Shop is open for lunches and light refreshments before and after all our lunchtime recitals. Our summer series uses the Gallery Organ, and the player can been seen via our live video display.     The Art of Improvisation Our Summer series of lunchtime organ recitals this year focuses on the spectacular art of improvising on the organ, but also acknowledges the London 2012 Olympic Games. Every recital will feature at least one improvised work, loosely based around the National Anthem of one of the participating nations. The organist will not be supplied with the theme until the start of the recital, to give him a maximum of 45 minutes from starting pistol to the finishing line!       Voyage à Paris   Our 2011 commission for the choirs was a new setting of the Mass for two choirs and two organs, composed by the international concert organist and composer David Briggs. The Messe pour Saint-Sulpice was co-commissioned by us and the choir of the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer, Calgary, and received its world première, in the presence of the composer, on 29 May 2011, at the remarkable Église Saint-Sulpice in Paris.   The 2011 Lunchtime Live! series was thus a celebration of the music of that great Church, and the programmes exclusively featured music by the generations of Organist-Composers of the great Église Saint-Sulpice in Paris, including such greats as Nivers, Clérambault, Lefébure-Wély, Widor and Dupré. We were honoured that our Patron for the series was non-other than the great Daniel Roth HonFRCO, Titulaire Organist, Église Saint-Sulpice, Paris.                The "Queen" of Instruments In the past couple of years a wave of talented women have been awarded some of the most prestigious musical posts in the Church of England; indeed two such appointments have recently been made at our Diocesan Cathedral in Peterborough. In celebration of this, our 2010 series features eight of the most talented women working in England today. We are delighted that Dr Jennifer Bate OBE (pictured on the left receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bristol) has agreed to act as Patron for the series, and to give one of the recitals.       In 2009 Lunchtime Live, there were six organ recitals, which cumulatively covered the Six Organ Sonatas of Felix Mendelssohn in what was his anniversary year, alongside the Six Trio Sonatas of J. S. Bach. The series was captioned with the following quote from Berlioz: "There is one god - Bach - and Mendelssohn is his prophet". The recital series began on Thursday 28 May, with the first organ recital given on Thursday 4 June. In the week prior to the six recitals an additional recital (Thursday 28 May) featured members from all our Choirs, performing vocal, choral and instrumental works by Mendelssohn, including his ever-popular "Hear my Prayer", sung by one of our Becketts & Sargeants Scholars, who was a finalist in the 2008 BBC Young Chorister of the Year. In the week after the final organ recital (Thursday 16 July), the ever-popular Pamela Rawlinson, presented some of Mendelssohn's piano music, in a mixed programme.     The 2008 programme of recitals was again a great success, each recital featuring a work by, or an arrangement of a work by, Ralph Vaughan Williams, in the 50th anniversary year of his death. The recital given by The Gough Duo featuring their arrangement of "The Lark Ascending" attracted a record lunchtime audience of 130, and the average attendance at recitals was over 50. The series attracted sponsorship from Michael Jones, jeweller, and Kenneth Tickell & Co., organ builders.   2008 also saw a series of special Lunchtime Live! recitals separate from the main season, culminating in a performance of Olivier Messiaen's La Nativité du Seigneur on the exact 100th anniversary of his birth, given by Richard McVeigh of Winchester Cathedral. At this concert we first demonstrated our new Video Screen Projection facility for our Gallery Organ, which we hope to use in the six Organ recitals the form the core of the 2009 series. This system enables the audience to see the console and performer, angled to show some detail of both hands and feet, on a 10ft by 8ft screen.       The 2007 recitals featured works by Sir Edward Elgar, marking the 150th anniversary of his birth. The programmes of early series are available from the menu on the left. The 2006 series included recitals by Matthew Martin (Westminster Cathedral), one of our Singing Tutors, David Crown, and the Pioro String Quartet. The 2005 series included recitals by Malcolm Archer (St Paul's Cathedral), Martin Baker (Westminster Cathedral) and Robert Quinney (Westminster Abbey).