X YEARS OF REVERB
BY JONNY GREENWOOD
Come and go. Stay all day. Read. Work. Drift. Dissolve.
Spanning eight hours on 08/08, this marathon organ recital will (in the composer’s words) “agitate and reanimate all the music, voices and sounds that have ever filled the air and soaked into the walls of the space where the music is played. To coax them out of the fabric of the building, so that they can be distilled and concentrated into just eight hours…”
X Years of Reverb is a bold musical exploration by rock musician and film composer Jonny Greenwood, intended to stir the echoes of the music and voices embedded in the history of a performance space. Greenwood’s composition slowly builds in texture and complexity, drawing inspiration from the gradual, revelatory approach of Indian music.
Join us from 12 noon, when a stopwatch will be triggered to track time-coded events in the score. Bring a book or quiet work and let the sound wash over you as you settle into the sacred hush of St Andrew’s. Come close to the organ and absorb its vibrations; step outside for a coffee. As daylight fades, the final moments of the piece will unfold in near-darkness.
You are encouraged to make a donation to support the upkeep of the organ—and to join us afterwards for a glass of wine to reflect on this unique sonic experience and your own treasured memories of music-making in this space.
Friday 8 August 2025, 12 PM to 8 PM
St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, De Waterkant
No charge; drop in at any time to savour the soundscape
John Woodland and Mikyle Adams (organists)
'Cape Diary' on Fine Music Radio 04.08.2025
We thank Elsabé Richter for this beautiful poster!
About the piece
X Years of Reverb was written in 2023 and dedicated to the memory of the composer’s nephew, Reef (2002–2024). The composer writes that the ‘X’ in the title (which we thought was an appropriate designation to retain in the context of VOX’s tenth anniversary) may be substituted for the age of the performance space; as St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church was granted its land, for the purposes of building a church, in 1825, one could imagine entitling this piece ‘200 Years of Reverb’ as we celebrate two centuries of this sacred performance space.
The first performance was given by Eliza McCarthy and James McVinnie, as part of the Norwich and Norfolk Festival, at Octagon Chapel, Norwich, United Kingdom, on 18 May 2024. This first performance in the southern hemisphere takes place with the kind permission of Faber Music.
Read an interview with Johnny Greenwood talking about X Years of Reverb in The Guardian…
“… it was good to hear a composer of Greenwood’s fame finding new things to say on one of the oldest of musical instruments.”
Composer’s programme note
X Years of Reverb was written to agitate and reanimate all the music, voices and sounds that have ever filled the air/soaked into the walls of the space where the music is played. To coax them out of the fabric of the building, so they can be distilled and concentrated into just eight hours.
Often, in an old church, air is passing through the same organ pipes (and into the same room) that have remained unchanged for centuries. Hearing church organs, then, is a kind of time travel—the closest we have to faithfully reproducing the experience of hearing pitched sounds in exactly the same way as our ancestors.
In approaching this piece, I was influenced by the classical Indian Carnatic approach to improvised melodies, where new notes are introduced very gradually into a player’s solo: the appearance of each note is so long-awaited, that its arrival is a revelation of a new world opening up. Knowing this introduces huge tension into the experience of listening to Indian music.
Melodies in Indian music are often thought of as circular, rather than linear—you’re climbing on to a moving wheel, not starting and ending in silence—this is why there’s a sense that X Years of Reverb begins and ends outside the audible spectrum. So, the music passes across the church in the same way that that the tones of the music pass across the audible spectrum. It’s analogous to how a rainbow is only the narrow range of the visible spectrum amongst all possible frequencies of light.
Further influence for the music came from the modern practice of tone sweeps, as used when PA systems are tested in different music venues. In these tests, every frequency is sent into the room from the speakers, and analysed to see how the room responds. Having witnessed this process many times, in a variety of venues, it seems to me that the space is different after the full range of tones have been sent: the room is re-energised, with every corner being visited by each frequency of sound, and the room’s history of music and celebration has been set loose.
© Jonny Greenwood
About the composer
Jonny Greenwood is an English musician; he is the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the band Radiohead and has composed award-winning scores for films such as There Will Be Blood and The Power of the Dog. X Years of Reverb received its world premiere from James McVinnie and Eliza McCarthy in Norwich last year. This first performance on the African continent takes place with the kind permission of Faber Music.
About the organists
John Woodland is a musician, broadcaster and scientist. He was fortunate to be schooled at Bishops (Diocesan College) where he was Claude Brown Organ Scholar in 2006. The following year, he was awarded the Cape Organ Guild Barrow-Dowling Scholarship and passed his licentiate recital diploma (LTCL) with distinction. For three years, while a student at the University of Cape Town (UCT), John trained and conducted the UCT Choir, the most diverse musical group on campus. In 2015, John founded his own choral group, VOX Cape Town. John has volunteered as a broadcaster on community station Fine Music Radio since 2006 and, since 2018, John has shared the pre-concert talks for the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s symphony concerts. John is also a research scientist in the Department of Chemistry and at the Holistic Drug Discovery and Development Centre at UCT.
Mikyle Adams earned his Bachelor of Music degree with distinction in organ from the University of Cape Town in 2021 under Grant Bräsler. He has performed at prominent venues including St George’s Cathedral and the Cape Town City Hall and was a Unisa Music Competition finalist in 2019. A recipient of the South African Church and Concert Organists’ Society bursary, Mikyle is Secretary of the Royal School of Church Music (Cape Town branch) and Head of Music at The Pinelands Primary School. Currently pursuing an MMus degree, his research explores the development of passacaglias by German and South African composers.
About St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church and its organ
St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Cape Town is the mother church of Presbyterianism in South Africa. It was built with the assistance of the British Government as a Scottish Presbyterian Church and opened in 1828 for the Scottish community including the Scottish garrison in Cape Town. As a result of the latter, St Andrew’s is still the regimental church of the Cape Town Highlanders; their roll of honour is kept there and their flags are laid up in the church.
The organ in St Andrew’s was built by P. Conacher & Co. of Huddersfield and was installed in 1887. In 1925, G. W. Price & Son replaced the original tracker action with a new tubular pneumatic action. The organ was restored in 2012 by Charles Hart of Cooper, Gill & Tomkins, replacing Price’s tubular pneumatic action with an electropneumatic action. This work was completed with funding courtesy of the Rupert Music Foundation.