St Albans International Organ Festival closes 2021 with a free Saturday concert at the city's Cathedral.

It has been a busy and successful year for the biennial festival.

Its July concert series attracted enthusiastic audiences, despite numbers being restricted for safety reasons, with exceptionally well-received performances by celebrated British artists including Nicola Benedetti and Jess Gillam.

The festival will conclude its events for the year on Saturday, November 6 with a free organ concert by Mark Williams from the University of Oxford.

Herts Advertiser: Mark Williams will perform the free St Albans International Organ Festival Saturday concert at St Albans Cathedral on November 6.Mark Williams will perform the free St Albans International Organ Festival Saturday concert at St Albans Cathedral on November 6. (Image: Supplied by St Albans International Organ Festival)

The Informator Choristarum, Organist and Tutorial Fellow in Music at Magdalen College will perform no fewer than 11 separate works in his hour-long programme.

The concert starts at 5.30pm in St Albans Cathedral.

The diverse programme will open with the grandiose Hymne au Soleil by Louis Vierne, who held the post of organist of Notre-Dame in Paris for nearly four decades in the early 20th-century.

The final work will be Moto Ostinato by the Czech Petr Eben, another organist-composer who was also known as a master of improvisation.

In between, the audience will hear music dating from the 1600s to the 21st-century.

Herts Advertiser: Inside St Albans Cathedral.Inside St Albans Cathedral. (Image: CHRIS CHRISTODOULOu)

The Cathedral is a Covid-secure venue.

For the reassurance of all, everyone in the audience will be encouraged to wear a face covering, unless exempt.

Printed programme and tickets are free, with donations invited to support the Organ Festival's future activities.

For more on the organ festival, visit https://organfestival.com/