Organ Festival 2022: Toyah Willcox announced as narrator

Actress and singer Toyah Willcox returns to Wiltshire on Saturday, November 5 for a Fireworks Day performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

Toyah and her husband Robert Fripp lived in Broad Chalke in the 1980/90s. She will tell the story of the heroic small boy Peter who takes on a fearsome Wolf, accompanied by a duck, a bird, and a cat.

Timed to work in with firework displays later in the day, the concert begins at 2pm with an hour-long programme.

The once-dubbed ‘princess of punk’ said that Peter and the Wolf "captivated" her as a child.

Toya added: “When I heard it as a child I was captivated by the way that the orchestra became the cast of animals and I’m really looking forward to seeing how John achieves that on the organ.

"I have been practising being the wicked wolf and the heroic Peter at home and I can’t wait to play the parts when I get to the cathedral.”

Toyah Willcox by Gary Clutterbuck (Image: Gary Clutterbuck)

Toyah will narrate the children’s classic in a truly fearsome and gruesome fashion while John Challenger, the cathedral’s assistant director of music, and Father Willis, the cathedral’s famous organ, will take on the musical role.

Sergei Prokofiev originally wrote Peter and the Wolf for orchestra, providing exacting instructions for how each of the characters in the story should be realised by different instruments.

John Challenger must tease those same voices out of the Cathedral’s 140-year-old organ while staying true to Prokofiev’s original intentions.

John Challenger in the organ loft by Ash Mills (Image: Ash Mills)

Weighing up the difficulty of the performance, John said: “Some of Prokofiev’s sounds are easily found within the organ. We have a beautiful Clarinet stop to depict the cat and an Oboe stop for the duck.

"The wolf is a little more complicated. He’ll require a combination of snarly sounds from deep within the organ, so I’ll need to spend some time experimenting.

"But Peter is going to be far and away the most difficult because he is represented by the string instruments and the organ is essentially a ‘wind’ instrument.”

The performance promises to be an adventure for all ages, but particularly children, as Toyah and John bring to life the fearless boy Peter and the ferocious wolf and his victims. It’s also a fun way for youngsters to discover the story-telling power of music, as Toyah well remembers.

Tickets for Peter and the Wolf takes at Salisbury Cathedral are already on sale: adults £10 (free carer tickets available) and children £5.