Music
Leeds Minster is the only parochial foundation in England without a resident choir school to have a programme of weekday choral services additional to Sunday liturgies.
Organists from 1842 include Samuel Sebastian Wesley 1842-1849, Dr Edward Bairstow 1906-1913, Dr Alfred Melville Cook 1937-1956 and Dr Donald Hunt OBE 1957-1975. Organist and Master of the Music, in office since 1975, the ninth musical incumbent since Wesley's day, is Dr Simon Lindley who came to Leeds after service at St Albans Cathedral and churches in the City of London; Lindley is the organist at Leeds Town Hall. He is chairman of the Ecclesiastical Music Trust in his capacity as a director of the English Hymnal Company and President of the Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir. The sub-organist and director of the girls' choir is David Houlder, formerly of Liverpool Cathedral and for a long period director of music at the Bluecoat School.
In Autumn 2009, Ashley Francis Roy began work as animateur for Chorister Outreach in two primary schools near the minster; the post was supported by the Church Urban Fund. Boy choristers attend church each weekday except Thursday, Friday evenings, Saturday mornings and twice on Sundays. Boy choristers attend St Peter's C of E Primary School in Burmantofts, Abbey Grange Church of England Academy, Cardinal Heenan Roman Catholic High School, Brudenell Primary School and Whingate Primary School. This work is being continued by Helen Strange, an undergraduate student of the University of Leeds who is also leader of the minster girls' choir.
The adult choir consists of lay clerks (including former boy choristers), choral scholars (undergraduates from the University of Leeds and Leeds College of Music) and supernumerary singers - altos, tenors and basses. During term time, Evensong is sung by the full choir on Wednesday and Friday evenings, by the boys on Monday and the men on Thursday. A semi-professional adult chamber choir, Saint Peter's Singers of Leeds was founded in 1977 and meets for rehearsals on Sunday evening during term time and present regular concerts and sing at choral services each season including at the end of each summer term, a memorial evensong for John Barrie Hanson - a member of the singers and choir.
The minster choir has been associated with the Royal School of Church Music since the early 1930s through links with Sir Sydney Nicholson, RSCM founder and churchwarden, Herbert Bacon Smith. Simon Lindley is one of the RSCM's longest serving special commissioners and has directed RSCM courses on four continents. The girls' choir formed in 1997 by Jonathan Lilley, meet weekly on Saturdays (regularly singing for Morning Worship) and participate in events involving the full choral foundation on special occasions.
Read more about this topic: Leeds Parish Church
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