Lee Dunleavy’s life-long passion for choral music began at St Peter’s Church in
Harrogate, where he served as Organ Scholar and worked alongside the
distinguished composer Philip Wilby in a number of premières. He read Music at
Hertford College, in the University of Oxford, as Organ Scholar and later
Director of Chapel Music. As Manager and member of the Oxford University
Orchestra, he worked with such esteemed conductors as Douglas Boyd,Peter Stark,
Garry Walker and Sir Roger Norrington.
After working as Director of Music at Christ Church, Southgate, London, and Musical Director of the Enfield Choral Society, he was awarded the Organ Scholarship at York Minster, combining this with teaching at The Minster and St Peter’s Schools. He holds both the Choral Directing Diploma and the Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists and is a prize-winning holder of the Archbishops’ Certificate in Church Music.
In 2006, he was appointed Director of Music at the prominent church of All Saints Northampton, and in 2007 he was made Musical Director of the Northampton Bach Choir. With these choirs he has commissioned over fifty new works, including works by David Bednall, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Stephen Cleobury, Michael Finnissy, Stephen Hough, James MacMillan and Philip Moore. The choirs have also toured extensively, from Canada and the United States to Germany and Poland; in 2010 the Choirs of All Saints will sing at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame and the Église Saint-Sulpice in Paris, giving the first performance of a new Mass by David Briggs, and the Northampton Bach Choir will sing Mass on Ascension Day at The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome. He has also made a number of well-reviewed recordings, most recently Omnes Sancti (2010), Omnis Gloria (2011) and Carol of Joy (2011), with the Choirs of All Saints Northampton, and Congaudeat! (2010) with the Northampton Bach Choir.
As an organ recitalist he is celebrated for the diversity of his programmes,
which often encompass music from the fifteenth century right through traditional
repertoire up to Jazz and Blues-inspired works. He has performed on BBC One, BBC
Radio 3 and 4, and toured throughout Europe, Canada and the United States. His
recent “Back to Bach” recitals have drawn in a new audience to the organ, and
his programming of the regular Lunchtime Live! series at All Saints have drawn
national acclaim. In 2009 the series paired six recitalists with the six Bach
Trio Sonatas and Mendelssohn's six Organ Sonatas; in 2010 the series featured
seven of the most prominent women organists working in England, including series
Patron Dr Jennifer Bate OBE; and in 2011 the series exclusively features music
from the generations of organist-composers of the Église Saint-Sulpice in Paris,
with Daniel Roth, Titular Organist at Saint-Sulpice as Patron.
He is also an active composer and his studies at university led to the award of a Britten-Pears Scholarship to study with Judith Weir; this in turn led to the commissioning and performance of his first Piano Quintet at the Purcell Room at the South Bank Centre, London. Whilst his most prominent compositions are written in a modern idiom, he is equally at home writing melodic and accessible works for groups of all ages and abilities, including a number of carols for the Northampton Bach Choir.