Skip to content

Organist to perform concert for her 100th birthday

Luke Deal,in Walberswickand
Alice Cunningham,Suffolk
News imageLuke Deal/BBC A woman sits in front of a piano reading large sheet music as she plays. She has short grey hair and wears a white long sleeved top with black stripes on it. She is also wearing glasses. Luke Deal/BBC
Julia Josephs has enlarged sheet music when she plays the piano and organ

A woman is celebrating her 100th birthday by holding her own church concert where she will play the organ.

Julia Josephs, from Walberswick in Suffolk, is the village's organist and choir leader at St Andrew's Church.

She learnt several instruments as a child and said the secret to her long life had been music.

The service to celebrate her centenary will see her playing the organ alongside a brass quintet, a choir and with some champagne thrown in.

"When people ask me what's the secret [to a long life], I'd like to say a few other things, but I have to say it is music," she said.

"My mother got me up with a cup of tea very early in the morning and I had to do half an hour's practice before I went to school from the age of four or five."

Born in 1926, Josephs was a scholar at the Royal Academy of Music and during World War Two she would commute into London so she could entertain the troops on the train with her viola practice.

She later taught herself the organ.

News imageLuke Deal/BBC A young woman with short brown hair and a middle-aged woman with short blonde hair stand behind an elderly woman, with their hands on her shoulders, as they smile at the camera. The elderly woman has short grey hair, glasses and is wearing a white long-sleeved top with black stripes. Luke Deal/BBC
Josephs' granddaughter, Cressi (left), and her daughter, also named Julia (right), will be attending her special 100th church service

Away from music, she was the owner and head of a girls' school in Leicestershire and she bought her cottage in Walberswick in about 1986 after developing a love for nearby Southwold during summer visits.

She has lived there ever since, but retiring and slowing down is not on her agenda.

Once a month she enjoys an evensong at the church where she plays the organ.

While her eyesight is not what it once was, she has specially printed sheet music.

"What I have to do now is have it enlarged and then memorise it," she explained.

"I try to do it last thing at night, I always think that's good for your memory, then it's sunk in."

News imageLuke Deal/BBC An elderly woman sits at a kitchen table. She is looking at the camera and smiling. She holds a card with the images of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on the front. Luke Deal/BBC
Josephs received a card from King Charles III and Queen Camilla for her 100th birthday

The choir, which Josephs described as "lovely", will also come back to her home where they will all enjoy a drink together after their performances.

Ahead of her birthday, Josephs received a birthday card from King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

"I am so pleased and absolutely delighted because Charles was married roughly at the same time as I was, and our children are roughly the same age," Josephs said.

"I've always been in line with him and I was in line with the Queen [Elizabeth]."

Josephs noted that as she had aged, she noticed people getting kinder, but she was adamant for now that she would not be moved into a care home and would remain in her own home.

Do you have a story suggestion for Suffolk? Contact us below.

Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

Stories like this