Roger Sayer is at the forefront of British choral and organ music. A former organ student at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Roger was prize winner at the 1989 Saint Albans International Organ Competition and won all the organ prizes at the Royal College of Music. Since then, he has been in demand both as a recitalist and accompanist, and his playing takes him to many parts of the world, including Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, and Australia.
Recent organ engagements include a live recital at the Temple Church, broadcast on the BBC, and the opening concert at the Summer Organ Festival at Westminster Abbey. His recordings include the complete Rheinberger sonatas and highlights of the six symphonies of Vierne, met with unanimous five-star reviews, as well as a soundtrack for a Sony video game and a collaboration with jazz saxophonist Mark Lockheart and composer John Ashton Thomas in the album, Salvator Mundi.
Roger Sayer is also an acclaimed choral director with some of the UK’s finest choirs. After founding the Rochester Cathedral girls’ choir, Roger was organist and director of music at Temple Church in 2013–2023 and created an impressive portfolio of broadcasts, concerts, and recordings. Under his direction, the choir’s recordings and performances consistently received five-star reviews. During the pandemic, he commissioned two works specifically for the boys of the choir. One of these works, Carmina Tempore Viri by Kenneth Hesketh, led to a live BBC Radio 3 concert with the choristers as they emerged after eighteen months rehearsing on Zoom. During his time at Temple Church, Roger also initiated a new mixed youth choir, offering choral singing opportunities to girls for the first time in the church choir’s history.
Roger is now heavily involved in touring his Interstellar Event across the world and performing to the film with live orchestra. For more information: rogersayer.org.
Life is an extraordinary journey of twists and turns, success and disappointment, joy, sadness, uncertainty, and surprise. When I was six years old, I would often find myself fascinated by the organ of the village church in Warsash, Hampshire, UK, as I sat beside my grandfather who was playing for weddings. I can still remember the musty smell of the church, but although it was only a one-manual organ, there was no doubt in my mind that this was something special.
My journey is not a normal one for an organist: no classy education, no Oxbridge organ scholarship. I remember a discussion with my father where we considered a job as a postman or a milkman, as both would allow me to take choir practice in the evening and practice the organ all afternoon.
I belonged to a large choir of boys and men conducted by an enthusiastic amateur. There was enormous pride in achieving the Saint Nicholas Guild status, a Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) award presented to parish choirs on obtaining a high standard of singing, and it was through this that I met Martin How, who was then the southern commissioner for the RSCM. His influence on me was profound, and I knew nothing would be more important to me than becoming a cathedral organist. There are three other people who have had the greatest and most positive effect on me. There is Reginald Wassell, a kind man who allowed me to play the organ at Saint Anne’s Church in Portsmouth Dockyard when others thought I was too young. The other two are Nicholas Danby for organ playing and Christopher Dearnley for accompaniment.
I did not follow the normal path expected of an aspiring organist in the 1980s. I was a student at the Royal College of Music, but spent much of this time learning repertoire and building a church choir in Woodford. I can remember putting leaflets through letterboxes and then a week later knocking on the doors. We ended up with a junior choir of thirty. These were exciting times, and we embarked on four international tours, including one to the United States. These were the days when we could visit the airplane cockpit and run tours without risk assessments!
I had the delight of being a housemaster and resident organist for residential RSCM courses for choristers, and during these years I had the privilege of getting to know Bob Prizeman of Libera fame. It was because of Bob that I had my first opportunity to experience a recording session for the theme tune for BBC Songs of Praise, which he composed and recorded at New College, Oxford, in 1984. The tune is still used now, but alas no longer includes the organ. I got a taste of recordings with BBC Songs of Praise and was regularly their organist for broadcasts from shopping centers and quaysides.
While all this was going on, a German man a few years my senior found himself drawn to the workings and the sounds of the organ. His name was Hans Zimmer, and throughout his distinguished career as a film composer, writing such scores as The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Rain Man, he had long wished to write for the organ.
In 2013 two serendipitous things happened. Hans Zimmer became involved in writing for the movie Interstellar, and I moved from Rochester to London to take up my position at the
Temple Church.
The score began very differently from the norm. Usually the composer watches the images from the production and writes as a reaction to the visuals. In the case of Interstellar, the main melody was written before the film was made. The film director Christopher Nolan gave Zimmer a letter asking him to write something that would represent his feeling about losing his son. What Nolan did not say was that this was to be a science fiction film. If Zimmer had known, then he might well have written something generically space themed. Within twenty-four hours he had written the haunting melody that has become inseparable from the film.
This melody, together with much of the most important musical material, was given to the organ, which takes a leading role throughout. The organ “breathes and exhales,” says Zimmer. It can convey drama, exhilaration, and beauty, all of which is necessary to the story. The organ part, a complex score made up of six separate parts, was originally to be played on the Salisbury Cathedral Hauptwerk sample, and with the film due for release in October 2014, Warner Brothers had the score signed off.
However, one afternoon the phone rang in my office at the Temple Church. It was Hans Zimmer’s office. They were looking for someone to play the organ in a big Hollywood blockbuster. Zimmer had had a last-minute change of heart and now wanted to give his music a special “human” element. He wanted a real organ and organist. This was March 2014, and by May 2014 the score had to be recorded with a live orchestra, organ, and organist.
Recording the soundtrack was full of mystery. First, we had to sign a confidentiality disclosure, because there was anxiety about other composers stealing the idea of having the organ as a solo instrument and therefore taking the credit. Secondly, we did not really know what this score was about. It was a sort of coded score with the title Flora’s Letter. Again, this was to avoid people putting two and two together if the organ score got into the wrong hands.
The recording session was an intense six days. There is a lot of music, and six separate organ parts throughout the entirety of the score. Given that the organ part was originally written for the Salisbury Hauptwerk samples, the registration indications were not always possible. This could have been tricky, as Zimmer had lived with the sounds and the score for a long time. Happily, the collaboration was very creative, and as we explored the possibilities of the Temple Church organ, he became more and more relaxed and enthusiastic. It was a brilliant joint effort and one that I will always remember.
When it came to recording the main theme (the one that was written before the film), there was no sign of Zimmer. Instead Christopher Nolan was there. I did not realize the significance of this music at the time, but Nolan was very determined to find the exact sound he wanted, and this took quite some time. The music is written for 8′ and 4′ flutes. There is an abundance of that sort of color and combination at the Temple Church.
The church was completely swamped by microphones and cables. They had microphones in every available space of the instrument and even recorded the blowers being turned on and off. This apparently is used in some of the scenes where the weather is particularly dramatic.
Perhaps the most challenging part of this was the speed at which I had to learn the score, as well as working within the parameters of a click track. I could not be a split second out, as the other players who were recording elsewhere would not be synchronized.
Finally, when I went to see the film I was actually surprised how “present” the organ was. At times, it was so loud that it overwhelmed the dialogue. This was noted in various journals around the world. I was amused that my loud organ playing was a source of global concern. Nolan came to my defense saying that it was intentional that the organ took over from the narrative.
Six months after the film was released, I was asked to play the organ part at the Royal Albert Hall with live film and orchestra at an event attended by members of the cast, and Professor Stephen Hawking and Professor Brian Cox, who had both done so much work on the astrophysics of the film. For me, the biggest challenge was condensing the six organ parts into a playable and authentic score. It was a great occasion, but not without its horrors. We were limited with rehearsal time, and the bar count broke down, leaving me rather vulnerable for some considerable time during the performance. However, it was a triumph and one of the greatest experiences of my career.
Since leaving my position at the Temple Church in 2023, it has been truly exciting to perform around the world. I wished to use the music and score of this film to connect with a new and younger audience. To my delight, these concerts are sold out and have allowed me to engage with people and hear personal stories about how much this has profoundly affected and touched them. This year the statistics are very heartening: three continents, over 50,000 miles traveled, and more than twenty sold out performances.
The Interstellar 10 event has been very successful across Europe, and in Canada and Australia, but given that its origins lie in the United States, I believe wholeheartedly that I should bring it to the American people to celebrate one of the greatest recent science fiction scores, distinguished by its use of the classical organ as a predominant musical feature. It was my privilege to have collaborated with Hans Zimmer, and now, ten years later, one of my greatest ambitions is to bring younger people to know the beauty and power of the pipe organ. In every case, at my sell-out events, the majority of the audience is under the age of thirty, and over half have never attended an organ concert.
With five confirmed engagements in 2025, a United States tour of Interstellar 10 is starting to gain traction. I will be visiting the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, to perform at the first National Soundtrax Festival in October 2025, and in November 2025, I will bring Interstellar 10 to Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston, Massachusetts, in collaboration with the Science Museum; Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, California; and the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles, California, home to the largest church organ in the world. Looking ahead to 2026, I have accepted an invitation to play at Saint Luke’s United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas, and look forward to adding more concerts to my schedule, as I take the iconic score across the country. We are working on an engagement at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, with Hanz Zimmer in attendance. I am deeply fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time and will hopefully continue my journey performing the Interstellar score and bring new and younger audiences to the organ.
Roger Sayer’s Interstellar 10 performances in the United States:
October 10, First United Methodist Church, Rochester, New Hampshire, 7:00 p.m.
October 17, Third Presbyterian Church, Rochester, New York, 1:30 p.m., part of the Soundtrax Festival in collaboration with the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
November 14, Grace Episcopal Cathedral, San Francisco, California, 7:30 p.m.
November 16, First Congregational Church, Los Angeles, California,
5:00 p.m.
November 21, Trinity Episcopal Church, Copley Square, Boston, Massachusetts, 7:00 p.m.
October 9, 2026, Saint Luke’s United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas, 7:00 p.m.
