Ian Watson plays the organ at the First Parish Church.
(This article was originally published in the Lincoln Journal on August 23, 2012.)
By Alice Waugh
As a boy in Buckinghamshire, England, Ian Watson was obsessed with the piano and organ—”that’s all I could ever think about,” he said. He began a distinguished musical career shortly thereafter and now, a decade after emigrating to the United States, he’s adding another piece to his repertoire: music director for Lincoln’s First Parish Church.
Watson, a self-described freelance conductor and keyboardist who lives in Hudson, is artistic director for the Arcadia Players, a period instrument ensemble based at the Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. For several years, he was also director of music at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Worcester, where he revitalized the choir and started a music festival, and conducted several major concerts a year.
Lincoln will get its own taste of period music from the Arcadia Players on October 7, when Watson will lead the group in a performance of Mozart and Hayden concertos in Bemis Hall (tickets are $20 at the door). He will also play fortepiano, the type of instrument used by those two composers.
The music from period instruments (for example, violins strung with gut and having a flatter and shorter fingerboard) “is beautifully clear and clean,” Watson said. “If Beethoven walked in, he would immediately recognize what we were doing by the style of music and the instruments we were playing.”
At age 14, Watson won a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he was awarded all the prizes for organ performance and others for piano accompaniment. He also received the Recital Diploma, the highest award for performance excellence. His first organ appointment was at St. Margaret’s, Westminster Abbey, at the age of 19, a position he held for 10 years. Watson later held several prestigious positions in London, including organist of St. Marylebone Parish church and music director of the historic Christopher Wren Church, St. James’s Piccadilly.
Until recently, the First Parish had both a music director and an organist, but after longtime music director Malcolm Hawkins retired last year, the music committee decided to look for a candidate who could do both jobs, said committee chair Mary Briggs. “The choir loft looks like it was designed for one person to do both jobs, so obviously it’s worked in the past,” she observed.
Watson’s audition was “fabulous,” Briggs said. “He blew us away with his organ playing —we’d never heard it sound so wonderful, and he got us in the choir to sing better than we thought we could. We’re so fortunate to have this musician with an international reputation joining us. I can’t wait for the beginning of the church year.”
“The First Parish of Lincoln offers an opportunity to present a wide variety of music, both choral and instrumental,” Watson said. “My intention is to build on what’s here, not to change anything for the sake of change, but to develop and expand it to the best it can be.”