Binns Organ | Lunchtime Concert
David Hill
Monday 3rd November 2025
Guilmant March on a theme of Handel
Franck Pastorale
Liszt Fantasia and Fugue on BACH
Coleridge-Taylor Three Impromptus
Lanquetuit Toccata
The concert runs from 1.10pm to 1.55pm. Admission £5. Feel free to bring your own lunch.
David Hill is widely respected as an organist, conductor and educator. He has held positions as organist of Westminster Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral and
St John’s College, Cambridge. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists when he was 17 whilst studying at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. His organ teachers were Jonathan Bielby, Derrick Cantrell and Dame Gillian Weir. He spent 4 years as organ scholar at St John’s, Cambridge under Dr George Guest. He is a past President of the Incorporated Association of Organists and from 2022-24 was President of the Royal College of Organists. He has given recitals since he was 10 and has played in many of the finest venues in the UK and abroad.
Away from the organ world, David operates a busy life as a freelance musician recognised by appointments as Musical Director of The Bach Choir, London, Music Director of the Leeds Philharmonic Society, Associate Guest Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and from 2013-24 he was Professor and Principal Conductor of Schola Cantorum, Yale University. He was Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers from 2007-17.
He is a regular contributor to the publication Choir and Organ.
He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Southampton University and, in 2019, an MBE for his services to music, is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, a recipient of the Royal College of Organists medal and most recently in March 2025 received the Choral Director’s Lifetime Achievement award from the Musicians’ Company.
He has made a number of discs as an organist. A CD recorded on Peterborough Cathedral organ was nominated as Critics’ Choice in the American Record Guide in 2021.
In recent years he and David Ponsford have worked closely together on recording music for two harpsichords including all the Bach Trio Sonatas on Nimbus: a new disc of arrangements is due for release on Nimbus in ’25.
He has recorded all the orchestral and choral works of Howells: in the summer of 2023 he recorded the complete Psalm Preludes and Master Tallis’s Testament on the organ of Durham Cathedral which has just been released on Regent Records. Howells, a lifelong fascination for Hill, arguably wrote more secular choral music than he did sacred. Hill, and his professional choir IKON, have just recorded a selection of Howell’s secular choral music, most of which has never been recorded previously and which will also be released on Hyperion in ’25.
Tickets: £5.00