Thursday 12 August 2004, at 8.00 pm

David Leigh

David Leigh is assistant organist of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and director of the Cathedral Girls' Choir. He combines these roles with teaching in NUI Maynooth and a busy freelance career as a keyboard player and choral conductor. The past year has included a nationwide opera tour, playing harpsichord in Rossini's La Cenerentolla, taking the solo part in Bach's Branderburg Concerto no. 5 with the UCD Baroque Orchestra, work with the Irish Baroque Orchestra, the Orchestra of St Cecilia, the Irish National Symphony Orchestra, the RTÉ
Concert Orchestra and numerous choral societies and chamber choirs. In addition, solo organ recitals have included Magdalen College, Oxford and Westminster Cathedral; in June 2003 David gave the Irish première, in the composer's presence, of Christus, a passion symphony for solo organ lasting some two and a half hours. He repeats this performance as part of the reopening celebrations surrounding the newly restored organ at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. David also conducts the Gaudete Singers and Res Nova, a vocal octet dedicated to exploring polyphony of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

A music graduate of Oxford University, where he was organ scholar of St Peter's College and Assistant Organist of Magdalen College, he studied the organ with Jonathan Rees-Williams, David Sanger and Nicolas Kynaston. Whilst Organ Scholar at Lichfield Cathedral, aged nineteen, he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, winning the Turpin and Durrant prizes, and also held the Oxford University Betts Scholarship in 1995-6. He has performed throughout Europe as soloist, accompanist and conductor, and features on a number of recordings, including one solo disc made on the organ of St Patrick's Cathedral in 2000. Two further discs, one feauturing the first recording of the Toccata for Organ by Francis Pott and music by Karg-Elert and Dupré, are currently in production.