London: Memorial Concert for Paul Goggins in aid of Cardinal Hume Centre

Paul Goggins

The Paul Goggins Memorial Concert in aid of the Cardinal Hume Centre, will take place on Friday, 30th January, 7.30pm, at St John’s Smith Square. Ashley Wass will perform Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto with the Southbank Sinfonia, conducted by Maxim Rysanov; and the Mozart Requiem with fine soloists. 

Benedict Warren writes:

"On the anniversary of Paul's death, can you help make the Paul Goggins memorial concert a success? I can count the number of times I shared time with Paul Goggins on one hand. And yet I will never forget this lovely man. He had a magnesium flash about him; as busy as ten stretched people, there he was, an admired MP devoted to his constituency and, on top of all this, briefly the Chairman of the Cardinal Hume Centre. For Paul, giving hours of his time to help the vulnerable and the homeless was as important, more important, than just about everything else.

I met Paul during my six years as a mentor at the Cardinal Hume Centre. This fantastically run charity – well worth a visit to if you haven’t already – has introduced me to several people whose lives were hard. A man who worked all night cleaning the escalators at Canary Wharf and then, sacrificing his sleep, headed for the Centre for free English lessons; a young woman who just needed a steer to help her realise that she was a natural-born carer. Their lives were not easy and yet, unlike many fortunate people, they never complain.

To run as smoothly and professionally as it does the Cardinal Hume Centre needs funds and in recent years I’ve had much fun haring around the UK on a bike with likeminded folk who love the melody of the wind on their ears and were up for raising money. As I have a music background, I suggested to Paul and Cathy Corcoran (Chief Executive of the Centre) that we have a crack at putting on a concert. They both welcomed the idea. Paul and I went to talk to Sir Nicholas Kenyon who runs the Barbican Centre. We sketched some thoughts on the back of an envelope for the first Cardinal Hume Centre charity concert. A few weeks afterwards I turned on the BBC Radio 4 news and the headline was Paul’s untimely death.

So there’s a sad twist to this story, in that the charity concert that Paul and I have put together has become an In memoriam to him. All of us are now working around the clock to ensure that the performance of Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto at St John’s Smith Square on 30th January will prove a lasting legacy to a great man and will benefit many people who are finding life especially hard at the moment.

Tickets for the Paul Goggins Memorial Concert in aid of the Cardinal Hume Centre on 30 January at 7.30pm are available online here: www.sjss.org.uk/events/ashley-wass-maxim-rysanov-beethoven-and-mozart-requiem-paul-goggins from St John's Smith Square, +44 (0)20 7222 1061."