Church musician sands down middle of pew (4)
I believe the answer is:
bach
'church musician' is the definition.
'Bach' can be an answer for 'musician' (composer Johannes Sebastian Bach). I'm not certain of the 'church' bit.
'sands down middle of pew' is the wordplay.
'sands down' becomes 'bac' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'middle of' says to take the centre.
'pew' becomes 'church bench' (synonyms).
The central letter of 'churchbench' is 'h'.
'bac'+'h'='BACH'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for bach that I've seen before include "musician" , "Johann Sebastian . . . . , great composer (4)" , "German baroque composer, d. 1750" , "German composer, who had twenty children, d.1750" , "JS --, baroque composer" .)