David Hill

Although his professional path opened chiefly through the organ, David Hill rose to become one of the foremost English choral conductors at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Orchestral engagements have included appearances with the Philharmonia and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestras, yet his most enduring achievements lie in choral repertoire, especially the Spanish Renaissance masters and English composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Born in Carlisle, England, on May 13, 1957, Hill displayed exceptional talent early on. He trained as an organist at Chetham’s Music School in Manchester, where conducting captured his attention at age fourteen. Three years later he earned fellowship status at the Royal College of Organists. At St. John’s College, Cambridge, he studied under George Guest, while Gillian Weir and Peter Hurford also figured among his principal mentors. Following graduation, his career advanced rapidly through a succession of distinguished appointments: sub-organist at Durham Cathedral from 1980 to 1982, music director of the Alexandra Choir from 1980 to 1987, master of music at Westminster Cathedral in 1982, organist and master of music at Winchester Cathedral from 1987 to 2002, and music director of the Waynflete Singers during the same fifteen-year span.

Parallel recording activity began in 1983 when Hill led the Westminster Choir in the first of his Hyperion albums devoted to Tomás Luis de Victoria, O Quam gloriosum. Shortly before assuming the Winchester and Waynflete positions, he became associate conductor of the Philharmonia Chorus and later served as its artistic director until 1997. In 1998 he took the post of music director with the Bach Choir. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and into the new century he continued to document both neglected scores—such as the three volumes of Charles Villiers Stanford choral music issued by Hyperion in 1997—and established works, including Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli on the same label in 1993. In 2003 he appeared as solo organist on the Regis Records collection Cathedral Organ Classics.

From 2003 to 2007 Hill served as music director of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He then held the chief conductorship of the BBC Singers from 2007 to 2017, and in 2013 he was appointed principal conductor of the Yale Schola Cantorum. Remaining exceptionally productive, he led his various ensembles in frequent recording projects. Among the 2019 releases were Handel’s Messiah with the BBC Singers on Resonus and Heinrich Schütz’s The Christmas Story with the Yale Schola Cantorum on Hyperion. By the time he issued Peter Warlock: Maltworms and Milkmaids with the BBC Singers on the EM Records label in 2023, his discography encompassed roughly one hundred titles.