Biography

Dr John Scott Whiteley is Organist Emeritus of York Minster, having worked at that great cathedral from 1975 until 2010 when he retired from the Minster in order to pursue his freelance career.  At the dawn of the 21st century he became well-known for his performances on BBC2 and BBC4 television of the complete organ music of J. S. Bach. 21^st-Century Bach was a joint commission by BBC2 and BBC4, and began in 2003.  The series was described by the British daily national newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, as ‘a triumph both visually and musically’. The commission was the result of John’s performance, in York Minster in the year 2000, of fourteen recitals that covered Bach’s complete organ music.

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Having studied at the Royal College of Music, and with Fernando Germani in Siena and Flor Peeters in Malines, John won first prize in the 1976 National Organ Competition of Great Britain.  He then gave solo recitals at the Royal Festival Hall, Symphony Hall, the UK Annual Conference of the Incorporated Association of Organists, Notre-Dame-de-Paris, St Petersburg Mariinsky and for international festivals in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, Russia and the UK.  The most recent of these have included the 2020 International Organ Festival in St. Albans, and Bach Festivals in Skiernewice, Poland, Camaiore, Italy, and St Petersburg.  From 1985 John toured the USA annually, and for twenty years he was represented by the well-known agency, Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists.

Recent recital programmes have included a new Toccata by Sir James MacMillan, which was commissioned for John to play at the 2019 Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral.  He has now given six performances of this repertoire work.

John has now made five DVDs and forty-two CDs.  These have been recorded by Priory, EMI, Guild, Regent, Amphion, Boreas and York Ambisonics.  His CD, Great Romantic Organ Music, appeared for eight years in the Penguin Good CD Guide as one of the best recorded organ recitals, and several other CDs have won awards, notably a Critic’s Choice Award from The Gramophone.  The award-winning recording, The Complete Organ Music of Joseph Jongen, formed the basis of some programmes made for the American Public Radio Network’s Pipedreams series, and his most recent release, JSW: A Worldwide Organ Tour, is a collection of previously unreleased historic recordings made between 1989 and 2019.

JSW recently recorded the complete Trio Sonatas of J. S. Bach for Fugue State Films.  This CD was recorded on the organ of the Phipps Hall of the University of Huddersfield and was released in March 2018 on Bach’s birthday.  A disc from Selby Abbey in the Tributes to Germani series has also just appeared.

John has researched and published articles about Bach for The Organ Yearbook, The British Institute of Organ Studies Journal, The RCO Journal and the Bach-Jahrbuch.  He is a contributor to Grove’s Dictionary and one of the editors of the Journal of the British Institute of Organ Studies; he is also a Consulting Editor for OUP and Banks.  Research topics also include Belgian composer Joseph Jongen, on whom he has published a monograph. In both 2003 and 2023 he was principal lecturer for the Joseph Jongen celebrations organised by the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.  His three-volume edition of the complete organ works of Jongen was issued by Bärenreiter in 2025.

Composition has recently occupied him more frequently, and he has now completed some 25 works for organ and 17 church compositions. The former include his recent Passacaglia and several works composed for the late Dr. Francis Jackson.  John has also transcribed, published and re-recorded the famous Symphony improvised by Pierre Cochereau at Notre-Dame de Paris in 1963.

Between 2000 and 2008 JSW directed the Girl Choristers at York Minster, with whom he recorded a CD of the music of Lassus in 2008.  He has taught the organ at the University of Hull, and, as a visiting tutor, at the Royal Northern College of Music.  He has also been an examiner to the Royal College of Organists, having been a member of the RCO Council for over ten years.  More recently, John was appointed Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, where in 2019 he was awarded the degree of D.Mus. by examination.  In 2014 he was appointed Academic Adviser to the Orgelbüchlein Project, the undertaking to complete Bach’s unfinished masterpiece.  He was Diocesan Organ Adviser for York and East Yorkshire between 2015 and 2020, and more recently he was elected to the Livery of The Worshipful Company of Musicians and to the Freedom of The City of London.

John retired from his professional career at the end of 2025.