Sheffield Bach Society
presents
DR SIMON LINDLEY in concert 
Beacon [Hallam] Methodist Church, Nether Green S11 7EH
A special recital in support of Sheffield Bach Society’s Diamond Jubilee Fund
(No tickets needed – for details, see concert page)
Handel/Best
Overture to the Occasional Oratorio: Grave – Allegro – Adagio – March
Mendelssohn
Sonata I in F minor, Op 65: Allegro moderato e serioso – Adagio – Andante/Recit – Allegro assai Vivace
Schumann
Canon in B minor [Six Canonic Studies for Pedal Piano, Op 56]
Bach
Fantasia in G, S572 [Piéce d’Orgue]: Vitement – Grave – Très lentement
Delius/Murray
The Walk to the Paradise Garden [A Village Romeo and Juliet]
Johann Christian Rinck
Variations and Finale on Heil dir im Siegerkranz
Massenet
The Last Sleep of the Virgin [La Vierge]
Vierne
Epitaphe [24 Pièces en style libre, Op 31 No 4 ]
Les cloches de Hinckley [Pièces de Fantaisie, Op 52]
Lefébure-Wély
Song of the Nuns – Choeur de Voix Humaines [Meditaciones Religiosas, Op 122, No 7]
Sortie in E flat
Simon Lindley is Conductor of Sheffield Bach Society and one of Britain’s most popular organists and choral directors.
He is Organist and Master of the Music at Leeds Minster and also City Organist for Leeds, positions he has held since the mid 1970s.
Additional to his Sheffield responsibilities, Dr Lindley is Music Director of Leeds-based St Peter’s Singers and conductor of Doncaster Choral Society and community choruses in Halifax [Overgate Hospice Choir] and at Leeds College of Music.
In July of 2012, an Honorary Doctorate of the University of Huddersfield was conferred upon him for his services to choral music locally, nationally and internationally.
Born in London, the son of an Anglican priest and a writer, Simon was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford and the Royal College of Music. He still sustains strong links with the City of London where his career began in the 1960s – he is Churchwarden of the Musicians’ Church [St Sepulchre-without-Newgate] and Chairman of the Friends of the Musicians’ Chapel there, and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians.
A former President of the Royal College of Organists and the Incorporated Association of Organists, Simon has worked for over forty years in many capacities for the Royal School of Church Music, of which he is an Honorary Fellow; Simon holds similar distinctions from the Guild of Church Musicians and the Guild of Musicians and Singers together with an Honorary Doctorate of Leeds Metropolitan University for services to the musical and civic life of his adopted city.
He is active, though in a modest way, as a composer and arranger for church choirs of all traditions and abilities and his setting of Ave Maria has achieved widespread prominence along with being included on Katherine Jenkins’ acclaimed CD Sacred Arias.
Simon sustains strong family links with Huddersfield and Sheffield on his father’s side and with Belgium on his mother’s . Family roots in the old West Riding and the Ardennes, continue to exercise an uncanny influence on his life and career. His Lindley great-grandparents were married at Broomhill Chapel in 1915, thus linking his family with the original home of the “Hallam” Father Willis…
An extensive discography includes two best-selling Naxos discs – French Organ Music from Leeds Parish Church and Handel Concertos with Northern Sinfonia as well as many recordings with the Orchestra of Opera North for Naxos and, on the Chandos label, an awarding winning performance of the fiendishly difficult Khachaturian Organ Symphony recorded in Leeds Town Hall live with the BBC Philharmonic. Other Chandos releases include accompaniments in cornet virtuoso Phillip McCann’s series The World’s most Beautiful Melodies and several acclaimed performances with Huddersfield Choral Society.
Dr Lindley lives in Fulneck, near Pudsey, and gives regular organ concerts in the village as well as at Leeds Town Hall and Leeds Minster.
Sheffield Bach Society 