Lee Dunleavy
Lee was an organ scholar at Hertford (Music, 1997) and whilst here managed Oxford University Orchestra and directed the OU Contemporary Music Group, the predecessor of Ensemble ISIS. He has gone on to a career as a conductor specialising in working with large amateur choruses.
Click the titles below to read Lee’s comments. Listen to his tracks in the YouTube playlist – to select a different song click the three horizontal lines in the top right of the video.
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Soweto Kinch – An Ancient Worksong
Soweto read history in the year above me, and whilst I remember hearing him playing his saxophone around college, and hearing him at a JazzSoc gig, I regret to say that at the time I don’t think I ever really listened to him. This live performance from Italy is full of all the colours and textures I love in large-ensemble jazz.
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Arvo Pärt – Passio
The music of Pärt and Tavener were regularly on the menu at Chapel during my time at Hertford, and the Chapel Choir sang this glorious Passion setting a number of times, most memorably in the glorious acoustics of Douai Abbey.
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Cole Porter – I’ve Got You Under My Skin
Aside from a brief dabbling with “grunge”, I arrived at Hertford knowing very little other than classical music. I made the acquaintance of Sinatra’s cover of this Cole Porter classic in Holywell Quad, and I’ve loved Sinatra and the Rat Pack ever since.
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Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”
Even though Mahler was a core part of the music course, I cannot honestly say I found it compelling until about ten years ago. A highlight of my career so far was conducting his Symphony No. 2 with a choir of 300, and this performance with Sheila Armstrong and Dame Janet Baker is nothing short of miraculous.
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Hans Abrahamsen – Let Me Tell You
This piece has no connections with my time at Hertford, but has become something of an obsession, partly because of its ASMR qualities. There is something magical about the way Abrahamsen sets Paul Griffiths’s distillation of Ophelia’s language, and even more when sung by Barbara Hannigan. Listen to the full recording below:
Abrahamsen – Let Me Tell You – Barbara Hannigan from Göteborgs Symfoniker on Vimeo.
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Anon – Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
My wife has been a devotee of shape note singing for twenty years and, despite my initial skepticism, I have fallen in love with it. One day, we’ll be able to cram into a small hall, in the hollow square, and belt out these raw unfinessed harmonies.
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James Brown & Betty Jean Newsome – It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World
If there’s no grit, there’s no pearl, so I thought it would be worth bringing something absolutely, devastatingly awful. Here James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti collaborate to take a fabulous song and wreck it. Every time I hear it my laughter is uncontrollable, and I think that will be necessary.
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Taraf de Haïdouks & Kočani Orkestar – Gypsy Sahara
I heard these two groups live in London, and was blown away. Writing this on a wet Monday in February during lockdown, I can say that this is music which never fails to cheer, no matter what the circumstances.
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Book
The Bible – Despite working in and for the Church of England for over twenty years, I have only recently taken stock of my own faith, and I would finally have the time to begin to join all the dots of the many texts I have encountered in their musical settings.
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Luxury item
A painting by Thérèse Oulton, whose works I have admired since university. Her 1989 painting Deposition is simply stunning, and sits unseen in a vault at Tate – it would be doing much more good keeping me sane on the island.
