Ophelia Amar

Ophelia Amar is a French-British musician based in London. She is an active performer both in France and in the UK. Recent appearances include recitals at Leeds Cathedral, Westminster Methodist Central Hall, St George’s Hanover Square and St Michael’s Cornhill in London, Troyes Cathedral, France, Holy Trinity Hereford as part of the 2025 Three Choirs Festival, King’s College Cambridge and St Albans Cathedral. In September 2025 she played at the Royal Festival Hall to accompany dance performances by companies Rambert and LA(HORDE). 

She has a particular interest in music from lesser-known French composers from the 1920s-1930s, contemporary music and chamber repertoire with organ. 

An Associate of the Royal College of Organists, Ophelia plays for services at St Mary’s with St George’s German Lutheran Church in London, Christ Church Spitalfields and also regularly at Notre-Dame-de-France church in Leicester Square and the French Protestant church in Soho Square. She is the organ tutor at The Latymer School, and combines her musical activities with working as the Administrator of the St Albans International Organ Festival and as Individual Giving Manager for Jonathan Cohen’s Arcangelo.

Ophelia graduated with a Master of Music (2023) and an Advanced Diploma (2024) in organ under the direction of David Titterington at the Royal Academy of Music, for which she was awarded the ABRSM EU Scholarship award, the Dorothy Cooper Prize and the Stephen Bicknell Prize. She was the Pidem Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music for 2024-2025.

Before coming to the UK, Ophelia followed a complete course in organ with Éric Lebrun at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (South-East of Paris), as well as in piano with Christine Fonlupt, and was awarded a Premier Prix in both disciplines. Ophelia was the holder of the Nicholas Danby Scholarship in 2021-2023 and recently joined the trustees of the Nicholas Danby Trust.

While in France and in parallel to her musical activities, Ophelia graduated in History, Political Science and Musicology from the Sorbonne in Paris and the Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität in Munich, and in Arts Management from HEC Paris Business School. She undertook research on the contemporary music festival Musica Viva in Munich, and continues her musicological work today with a commissioned biography of fin-de- siècle French violinist Charlotte Vormèse for a new research centre which will open its doors later in 2026 in the Sables-d’Olonne, France.

In October 2026 Ophelia will be starting a PhD in Music at the University of Cambridge, supported by a Vice-Chancellor’s Award and the David Gledhill scholarship. Her research will be focusing on networks and influences upon the young generations of organists from the Paris conservatoire in the 1930s.

Programme

Toccata undecima Georg Muffat (1653-1704)
Prélude, Fugue et Variation op. 18 César Franck (1822-1890)
Promenades en Provence (extracts):
Petit cimetière et Cyprès autour de la vieille église de Bormes-les-Mimosas (n° 6)
Tambourinaires sur la place des Vieux Salins (n° 3)
Le moulin d’Alphonse Daudet à Fontvieille (n° 11)
La chartreuse de Montrieux au crépuscule (n° 12)
Nuages ensoleillés sur le Cap Nègre (n° 4)
Eugène Reuchsel (1900-1988)
Passacaglia in d Johann Kaspar Kerll (1627-1693)
Fresque symphonique sacrée n° 2 op. 76
Charles Tournemire (1870-1939)