The Rector, Wardens, and Vestry of Trinity Church on the Green are delighted to announce the appointment of Simon Lee as Interim Director of Music for the 2024-25 academic year. Simon is a very seasoned musician with extended expertise in choral teaching, conducting, and singing. It is a tremendous honor to welcome him to Trinity and we are so looking forward to his leadership and guidance during this transition period. As we continue the search for a permanent Director of Music with new energy and inspiration, we feel blessed and guided by God's providence in having Simon Lee come to Trinity to empower our choirs and our congregational singing during this transition period.
Simon Lee holds a Master of Music degree in Choral Conducting from the Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music where he studied under the tutelage of Marguerite L. Brooks, Jeffrey Douma, and David Hill. During his time in Connecticut, he was conductor of the Marquand Chapel Choir at Yale Divinity School and temporarily the Director of Music at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, New Haven. He also worked with the Morse Chorale, part of Yale’s Morse Summer Music Academy program.
Born and raised in the northwest of England, Simon began his musical career as a chorister at Lancaster Priory. He studied clarinet and saxophone performance at Leeds University where he was also a choral scholar at Leeds R.C. Cathedral. Upon graduation from Leeds in 2009, he moved to Durham to take up the post of tenor Lay Clerk at the Cathedral. He completed a PGCE in Primary Education at Durham University in 2012, and having done this taught in schools across the north-east. After his graduation from Yale, Simon returned to Durham to rejoin the Cathedral Choir and concurrently pursued a career as a choral conductor and tenor soloist. He currently conducts a range of choirs in Durham and Newcastle including Cappella Newcastle; the Durham Cathedral Consort of Singers; Tune Central, an office choir shared between Muckle LLP and RBC Brewin Dolphin’s Newcastle offices; and his own professional ensemble, Northern Consort . In 2017, he was a semi-finalist in the American Choral Directors’ Association’s national Graduate Conducting Competition.
“I am absolutely delighted to be returning to New Haven and joining the team at Trinity on the Green," says Simon. "It feels like a homecoming since I graduated from Yale five years ago. I visited the church last summer and received a very warm welcome and it was good to renew old friendships as well as make new ones! The heritage of the choirs is undeniable, and I am looking forward to working with both children’s choirs as well as the adult choir and taking part in all of the other musicmaking which goes on in the church.
"Music has the wonderful ability to bring all people together; we have a visceral reaction to it and it can heighten and elevate a situation making it all the more meaningful for all those present. This is true all the way through our lives, from our earliest moments of comprehension to our last hours. It is at the heart of a living parish and I feel honoured that I am able to be part of the musical story of Trinity.”
Welcome, Simon!
