Robert Quinney sustains a longstanding British custom of directing university ensembles, appearing as an organ recitalist, and instructing students. Since 2014 he has led the New College Choir, Oxford.
Born in Nottingham in 1976, he first sang as a chorister at Dundee Cathedral and subsequently at All Saints Ecclesall Church in Sheffield, where his organ studies also commenced. A scholarship took him to Eton College, after which he served as organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, from 1995 to 1998 and earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees there.
His career began with a year as Acting Sub-Organist at Westminster Abbey, followed in 2000 by appointment as Assistant Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral. There he conducted the Cathedral Choir intensively and gave frequent organ recitals, among them a performance of Francis Pott’s demanding Christus; he also guided the choir on tours of the United States and Australia. In 2005 he appeared as organist on the Hyperion recording of Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor made by the Westminster Cathedral Choir.
Quinney played the organ at the 2011 wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton. Early in the decade he served as director of music at Peterborough Cathedral, where he supervised the instrument’s renovation, and as director of Oundle for Organists.
In 2014 he became organist, Tutorial Fellow, and choral director at New College, Oxford, posts that included promotion to associate professor of music; he succeeded Edward Higginbottom, whose leadership had given the New College Choir, Oxford, its international profile. Solo organ recordings by Quinney have been issued on Signum Classics, Coro, and Novum. At New College he has maintained the recording schedule begun by Higginbottom, moving with the choir to the Linn label for the 2020 album Media Vita, devoted to music by John Sheppard. In 2023 Quinney and the choir released New College; Commissions & Premieres on Linn.
