St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow

Friðrik (Frikki) Walker, the Director of Music is an all-round musician (in more than one sense of the expression!) being professionally active as a conductor, singer, composer, arranger, organist, accompanist and teacher.

Frikki (as he is known) was born in Reykjavik in Iceland. His organ teachers have been David Williams, Ian Tracey, George McPhee and Anne Marsden-Thomas. He has played services and recitals in many of Britain’s Cathedrals, and has played services, recitals and broadcasts from many venues in Iceland.

This year Frikki made his debut playing organ and harpsichord continuo with Symphonia Alba and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Roy Goodman.

His singing studies have been undertaken with Barbara Dix, Duncan Robertson, David Johnstone, Mollie Petrie and Deirdre Trundle, with whom he made a particular study of the adolescent voice in boys and girls. He was for four years or so a Tenor Lay Vicar Choral in the choir of Wells Cathedral. Frikki has sung with Opus IV (with Christine Walker, John Rowlands-Pritchard and Nigel Perrin) and sang in Opus Anglicanum for their first major tour to Holland. As a soloist he has sung the tenor solos in most of the main oratorios in a variety of venues in Britain and abroad. He is also not averse to singing a bit of cabaret and jazz.

Compositions are mainly church music, including commissions from Bath Camerata, Wells Cathedral Vicars (a set of responses for men’s voices, still in use), Horsham Parish Church and St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow, as well as several schools. Arrangements are extensive and in many styles.

Frikki has held teaching appointments in Wells Cathedral School, Pennthorpe School in Horsham, and various schools in Glasgow, including three years as Director of Music at Hutchesons’ Grammar School. He is currently on the staff of Bearsden Academy and the Junior Academy of the RSAMD, where he is responsible for the Chamber Choir and organ teaching, as well as accompanying and General Musicianship. Frikki has recently been approved as an examiner for the RSCM “Voice for Life” scheme.

It is as a choir trainer that Frikki is in greatest demand, and he has conducted choirs of all sizes, all ages and all abilities all of his life, since forming his own chamber choir at the age of fifteen. Frikki was Musical Director of the Glasgow Chamber Choir from 2000 to 2004, and he regularly deputises for and assists the RSNO chorus-masters (including tours to Copenhagen and Trondheim) as well as being on the staff of the National Youth Choir of Scotland.

Following appointments at Horsham Parish Church (where he built up two choirs to a membership of 25 boys, 25 girls and 20 adults) and the University of Glasgow, Frikki has been Organist and Director of Music at St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow, since 1996.

Here he trains the increasingly famous choir (featured on BBC TV’s Songs of Praise, and to be heard regularly on BBC Radio 4’s Daily Service) and plays the organ. Since his appointment, he has made two CDs with the choir, and taken them out to sing concerts in and around Scotland. In the summer of 2003 the choir ventured South for the first time and sang services in Tewkesbury Abbey for a weekend. In the summer of 2004 they sang for a whole week in Lichfield Cathedral, and 2005 saw them singing for a week in Salisbury Cathedral.

The choir now regularly sings for Radios 2, 4 and Scotland, and has also broadcast for the first time on the BBC World Service.

There has also been a programme of commissioning new works for the choir. As well as writing for the choir himself, Frikki has commissioned works from Richard Shephard, Malcolm Archer, Richard Pantcheff, John Gormley and John McIntosh.

Frikki has also increased the amount of instrumental input into worship at the Cathedral, using gifted members of the choir and congregation who play to a high standard, and nurturing contacts with local schools, as well as sometimes “buying in” the professional. This has given rise to regular use of the St Mary’s Festival Strings, Brass, Orchestra and even on occasion a Gallery Band!

As well as a keen interest in all styles of music, Frikki enjoys preparing and eating food, has an extensive collection of bookmarks, would love to own a Classic car, and is an avid fan of Star Trek.