Jonathan Rennert

Who is Jonathan Rennert?

Jonathan Rennert is an English organist, conductor and writer. He gave his debut broadcast organ recital at the age of 19 in Westminster Cathedral, having become a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists at 18. He studied at the Royal College of Music under Richard Popplewell, John Barstow and William Lloyd Webber, and at Cambridge under George Guest and Gillian Weir. Awards included Cambridge University's John Stewart of Rannoch Scholarship in Sacred Music and 'Greater London Arts Association Young Musician 1975'. Short periods based in London and Ottawa were followed by his appointment in 1979 as Director of Music of St Michael's Cornhill, the church which has been his base for 32 years. Here he has given more than 400 of the weekly lunchtime organ recitals, and continued the musical traditions of such predecessors as William Boyce and Harold Darke. He has tended to specialise in the music of J S Bach and romantic English composers, though he also gives first performances of new music.