Two Journeys, One Wurlitzer: Engineer And Virtuoso Share Victoria Hall Console

Saltaire's Mighty Wurlitzer will host an unlikely double act on Sunday 11th October at 2.30pm, as a Royal College of Music-trained concert organist and the engineer who restored the instrument itself take turns at the console.

Mark Laflin came to the theatre organ first, as a boy, only to leave it behind for the classical training that carried him to the Royal College of Music and then to an organ scholarship at Keble College, Oxford. It was, in the end, a detour rather than a departure: he returned to the theatre pipe organ and has built a concert career that draws on both worlds. He has recorded two acclaimed albums, at the Tywyn Wurlitzer and the Clayhall Compton, been heard on BBC broadcasts, and served a stint as resident organist for The Organist Encores podcast.

Robert Balfour-Rowley arrives at the same console from the opposite direction. Trained as an electronic engineer, he moved into organ building and has spent his career maintaining and restoring some of the country's finest instruments, among them those at the Royal Festival Hall, Westminster Abbey and Watford Colosseum, as well as Victoria Hall's own Wurlitzer, on which he has carried out extensive restoration work. Years spent inside the mechanism, it turns out, have only sharpened his instinct for what to do with it from the stool: he is increasingly returning to performance himself, bringing an organ-builder's ear to every stop he pulls.

Between them, Laflin and Balfour-Rowley promise an afternoon of light and popular music that puts both the artistry and the engineering of the Mighty Wurlitzer on display, a rare chance to hear the instrument explained from the inside out.

Light refreshments will be available for a donation, with under-stage tours offering a look at the organ chambers and their roughly 1,000 pipes and percussion effects. The hall has level access via a lift from Lockwood Street, and Saltaire station is a few minutes' walk away.