AboutMartin Neary's association with the Choir of Westminster Abbey began in 1988. Since that time the choir has gained a world-wide reputation through their various concerts, tours and recordings and, in 1997, was seen by a world-wide television audience of over 2 billion people when they performed under his direction at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Like his most illustrious predecessors, Orlando Gibbons, John Blow and Henry Purcell, Dr Neary began his musical career as a Chorister at the Chapel Royal. Following this he was Organ Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, a prize-winner at the St Albans International Organ Festival (1963), and a conducting student under Erich Leinsdorf at Tanglewood on a scholarship from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As organ recitalist he has played on numerous occasions in the Royal Festival Hall in London and at cathedrals and festivals throughout the UK. He has undertaken many tours of Europe and North America and has played in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Far East. He has a particular affinity with French music - his mother is French - and he has prepared editions of Old French Organ Music for Oxford University Press. In 1980 Dr Neary was awarded a UK/USA Bicentennial Fellowship at Princeton University, and in 1984 he spent a term as Artist in Residence at the University of California at Davis. His honorary awards include Membership of the Royal Academy and Fellowship of Trinity College. He has also served two terms as President of the Royal College of Organists, only the second person ever to have been so honoured. Before assuming his post of Music Director at Westminster Abbey, Martin Neary was Organist of Winchester Cathedral, where he enhanced his reputation as an innovative choral conductor, expanding the repertoire of the Choir and directing them in many performances of baroque and contemporary music. He led them on twelve foreign tours, including four visits to North America with concerts at Washington Cathedral, the Kennedy Centre and Carnegie Hall, and he twice conducted them at the Proms in London. Throughout his tenure, Martin Neary has continued to encourage the commissioning of works by contemporary composers for the Westminster Abbey Choir. He has frequently performed baroque works with them in the Abbey - Bach's St. John Passion and Christmas Oratorio have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3. In 1995 he was a member of the Purcell Tercentenary Committee and was actively involved with the Choir in the Tercentenary celebrations, including two concerts televised live by the BBC. Martin Neary and the Choir of Westminster Abbey have made a number of recordings for Sony Classical's "Arc of Light" label, namely a live recording of John Tavener's Akathist of Thanksgiving (SK64446); a recording of music composed for Queen Mary by Purcell and his contemporaries (SK66243); a disc commemorating a millennium of music at Westminster Abbey (SK66614); Miserere, a sequence of music for Holy Week (SK66615); a collection of choral works by John Tavener, including the world première recording of Tavener's Innocence (SK66613); a collection of traditional carols, Adeste Fideles! (SK62688), which also featured the British soprano, Emma Kirkby and, for Christmas 1997, Britten: A Ceremony Of Carols, with Michael Chance and Ian Bostridge (SK62615). The latest release from Martin Neary and the Westminster Abbey Choir as released in September 1998. Perfect Peace (SonyTV49CD/SonyTV49MC) is a collection of music taken from special services held at the Abbey, including the 1953 coronation, the service held to commemorate the Golden Wedding Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh and the funeral service of Diana, Princess of Wales.
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