A Triumphant Return: The Restored Organ of St Peter and St Paul
On 1 March 2025, the Chapel of St Peter and St Paul at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, marked a major milestone—the first performance on its 235-year-old organ since its comprehensive restoration. Silent since 2020, this remarkable instrument—famously played by Sir Elton John in Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)—has now been fully revived, bringing its powerful voice back to the chapel’s historic setting.
The Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban Choir, led by Dr Ralph Allwood MBE, delivered a superb performance alongside organists Jonathan Eyre and Alexander Knight. Introducing the show, Allwood reflected on choral music as a powerful act of collaboration, essential to human success—a fitting message for an evening that honoured both history and renewal.
The programme balanced organ solos and choral works, making full use of the chapel’s acoustics. Parry’s 'I Was Glad' and Widor’s 'Messe à deux choeurs et deux orgues' were highlights, while the organ’s placement at the rear allowed for moments of reflection as the audience faced Benjamin West’s towering 25-foot tall 'Preservation of St Paul after a Shipwreck at Malta'.
The evening also marked a transition, bidding farewell to Jonathan Eyre and welcoming Alexander Knight as the new organist. With its historic organ restored to full splendour, the chapel remains an outstanding venue for worship and music—well worth a visit.
LIVE REVIEWS
Thursday nights at Heaven don’t often look like this. The London gay club is filled with messy-haired Zoomers wearing baggy jeans and heavy silver chains, who sold out the venue in seconds. They’re here to see 2hollis (real name Hollis Frazier-Herndon), who just last year was booed offstage while supporting Ken Carson on tour. Tonight, however, he gets nothing but adoration.
2hollis first became popular online for making medieval-themed trap and, alongside the likes of Nettspend and fakemink, has been a major influence on fashion and digital culture at large. And though the phrase ‘nepo baby’ has been thrown around (his mother managed Skrillex and founded a successful PR film, while his father is the drummer of American rock band Tortoise), tonight proves 2hollis is a genuine phenomenon with an undeniably organic fanbase.
As the 21-year-old jumps around on stage, his long platinum pigtails bouncing off his bare chest, he looks like a Dragon Age character that went to Central Saint Martins. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he drawls in Auto-Tune to a rapturous response. It’s the most we hear from him all night, but he doesn’t need to be too talkative when his fans react to his presence by slamming their bodies together and waving his red-and-white branded flags like a call to battle.
In a world post-‘Whole Lotta Red’, kids want to be immersed in a wall of noise to get out of their heads and throw down. But with 2hollis, it’s different. His lyrics, though somewhat cringey, actually have sentiment. ‘Sister’ has the whole crowd singing: “Girl, I love you like a sister / Cross my fingers when I’m with you / Hold back a smile ’til my teeth hurt.” They’re lines that could be lifted from a noughties Bieber album, but backed by Drain Gang beats that propel it into the TikTok age.
In response, the crowd gives each song the big hitter treatment: every word is cried back at blistering volume, there’s no break in the moshing, and there’s never a moment to pop out for a quick ciggy (everyone’s vaping anyway).
Standouts include the sugary sweet ‘Crush’, which has an 80 per cent male crowd singing sweetly while smacking into each other; ‘Afraid’, with an appearance from support act and childhood friend Nate Sib (who had the crowd riled up nicely from his earlier set); and ‘Jeans’ – which goes down so well that he does it four times.
Though it does feel like 2hollis didn’t quite have control of the crowd to start, sheer excitement has them jumping incessantly to the first few songs that it almost doesn’t matter what he was playing. By the end, he manages to wrangle them into place. He reminds them to give each other space, perches on the side of the stage for slower moments like a real teenage pop star and even gets right up against the barrier for the final rendition of ‘Jeans’ before finally declaring: “That’s it!” After doing three encores, he needn’t say much else.
‘Gold’
‘Say It Again’
‘FORFEIT’
‘Trauma’
‘Poster Boy’
‘Sister’
‘Need That’
‘Lie’
‘Two Bad’
‘Crush’
‘GOD (Live Edit)’
‘Style’
‘Whiplash’
‘Cliche’
‘Afraid (With Nate Sib)’
‘Light’
‘Ouu (Alongside Rommulas)’
‘Jeans’
‘Jeans’
‘Jeans’
‘Jeans’
.jpg)
