Benjamin Saunders plays live from Leeds Cathedral, in the seventh recital of the Festival.
Programme:
Galliarde and Carmans Whistle - William Byrd (1542-1623)
Farewell to Stromness - Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016)
Florita: A Tango - Ronald Willis (b.1969)
Three Jazz Miniatures - Oscar Peterson (1925-2007)
Waltz No. 2 - Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Libertango - Astor Piazzolla (1933-1990)
Benjamin Saunders was born in Warrington and educated at George Heriot’s School in Edinburgh. He won an Organ Scholarship to Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied with Peter Hurford. Upon graduating, he held organist posts at the Cathedrals of St Giles’ Edinburgh, Blackburn and Chester, and continued organ studies with David Sanger, Ann Bond and Michel Bouvard.
In 2002, Saunders was appointed Director of Music for the Diocese of Leeds. During this time, he has been a guest speaker at a variety of university conferences across the UK, Ireland and the United States, and a judge for the BBC Young Chorister of the Year Competition. He was appointed a Director of Leeds College of Music in 2013, and Visiting Professor of Music at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana in 2015. He has also received honorary awards from the Guild of Church Musicians and the Royal School of Church Music.
Saunders has performed to HM the Queen, Princess Anne and US President Carter and worked with conductor Carl Davis and jazz virtuoso Dick Hyman. Solo tours have led him to give organ recitals in Russia, France, Italy, Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and the United States. He records for Brilliant Classics with four CD releases of the organ works of Georgi Mushel and Hendrick Andriessen, and choral works of Maurice Duruflé and Arvo Pärt. A jazz recording of the complete organ works of Dick Hyman was released in 2016 on the ProOrgano label. He has also been a drummer in two rock bands and keyboardist in the Edinburgh International Jazz Festival. He has recently begun learning traditional and classical accordion with Harry Hinchliffe and Miloš Milivojević.
Leeds Cathedral’s organ was manufactured by one of the most eminent English organ builders, Norman and Beard, and was built specifically for the Cathedral in 1904. Following a period of around thirty years’ silence, Johannes Klais Orgelbau of Bonn were chosen to reconstruct and enlarge the instrument to serve the requirements of the restored Cathedral and new position of the choir. The organ was built in the Klais workshops, and transported to the Cathedral in July 2009 to complete the work in situ over a six-month period.
The project was supervised by Benjamin Saunders and the late David Sanger. The tonal style is English Edwardian, and so all the historic 1904 pipework has been carefully restored on its original chests, with new pipework matching the original materials and construction methods. The organ now has seven divisions, controlled from a four-manual console with 78 stops, and features a unique new system of allocating manual departments to keyboards (specification: www.dioceseofl...
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