John Crothers of St Andrew’s Church in Kyrenia has received an Honorary Award from the Royal School of Church Music.

Based in Cyprus and France, John serves as St Andrew’s organist and choirmaster when in Kyrenia; in Paris, he is a member of St George’s Anglican Church. 

John studied the organ with Dr Donald Davison, Belfast City and University Organist and music editor of a number of Anglican Hymnals, and is himself a keen composer of hymn tunes and anthems for the Church. His biography of Northern Irish choral conductor Ronald Lee was released in 2019.

An Executive Member of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland, to which he was introduced by Timothy Dudley-Smith (whose life and work he is currently researching), the Society has a special place in John’s affections, and he rarely misses an annual conference—representing HSGBI at a meeting of the Hymn Society of the US and Canada in Vancouver in 1999 and addressing the latter’s 2022 centennial conference in Washington, DC.

John has been organist in Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican churches, and has served as chair of the RSCM in Ireland and France—having moved to Paris in 2001 to teach English, following a career in education teaching Modern Languages in Northern Ireland. Now retired, he is co-presenter of the French-language radio programme Magazine Anglican on Fréquence Protestante FM, covering Anglican music and hymnology.

John’s interest in hymnody goes back to childhood, spending Sunday afternoons at the piano honing sight-reading skills with the church hymn book. His lifelong devotion to church music is a gift and a delight to so many.

Pictured: John Crothers with St Andrew Kyrenia parish priest the Reverend Alec Mitchell

Credit: HSGBI; Linda Balfe