Rehearsing and performing music provided a metronomic rhythm for Kyoko Canaway (MML (French and German) 2018) during her time as a Gonville & Caius College student.

Kyoko was an organ scholar at Caius. Since graduating last summer she has become Assistant Organist, supporting Precentor Matthew Martin and the Gonville & Caius College Choir while following her own musical pursuits.

The organ offered a constant in a University of Cambridge experience disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, providing solace on her year abroad, in Freiburg, Germany, and at home, even during her finals.

“When the exam period started I was permanently in an exam for 10 days, because of the format of my exams,” Kyoko says.

“It was hugely psychologically taxing, but I had to keep going to Evensong and playing the organ. It wasn’t the best I ever played, but it was nice to leave that exam essay for a bit and do something that was quite grounding.”

Kyoko was drawn to the discipline of the organ, which she began playing at Repton School in Derbyshire, believing the “external pressure” of regular rehearsals and performances would provide an incentive to keep playing to a high standard alongside the intensity of an academic degree.

“I didn’t want to study music academically but I wanted to be playing it,” she adds.

“I wanted something where there was an expectation for a certain level of music making.”

She honed her organ playing on a gap year at Chichester Cathedral before coming to Caius, where her expectations were met.

“I’m really glad I did it,” adds Kyoko, who has performed on BBC Radio 3 broadcasts and in recitals across Cambridge, in London and elsewhere.

“It’s extremely demanding but in a very different way to academic work. So it’s nice to have as an outlet.

“There’s something about the organ… you’re not just playing on your own, you’re accompanying a choir, you’re in a professional setting every day working with an experienced Director of Music and you’re training your ear as well as your own playing.

“It’s an amazing general musical education.”

Kyoko plays four instruments – organ, piano, flute and bassoon. Since graduating, she has had more time to explore opportunities musically and has found herself in demand.

“It turns out there aren’t many bassoonists in Cambridge,” she says. “I let slip to one of my housemates that I played the bassoon just as he was organising an orchestra for a Mozart Requiem and he asked me to play. Now everyone seems to know that I play the bassoon!

“I was in the Nottingham Youth Orchestra, but having stopped for four years it’s really lovely to be back in an orchestra.”

Kyoko’s advice to anyone keen to play the organ is to seek any and every opportunity to practise, as she did in a year abroad affected by Covid-19 restrictions, where she still made the most of being at the Hochschule in Freiburg.

Music was the subject of her French and German dissertations and living abroad is a potential future option. She is happy to have chosen music as an extra-curricular activity, rather than her degree subject.

She is not religious and says a church background is not necessary to be able to experience and appreciate organ music.

She adds: “There’s been some amazing music written for the church setting. That’s where it all started. You get to see some incredible pieces of music.

“It can become quite comforting to go to an Evensong because you know exactly what’s going to happen. It can have a meditative effect.”