John Harper

Professor John Harper took over the leadership of the RSCM from Dr Harry Bramma in 1998. He has had a life-long career in church and choral music, starting as a chorister at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge under the direction of Boris Ord and Sir David Willcocks. John Harper was Organist & Informator Choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford, in the 1980s, and he directed the music of St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham, and the Edington Music Festival in the 1970s. He has held academic lectureships in musicology at the universities of Birmingham and Oxford, and the Chair in Music at the University of Wales, Bangor. He is currently Director of the new International Centre for Sacred Music Studies (ICSMuS) at Bangor, has published (1991) a guide to Western liturgy, and is committed to the preservation of Welsh language, music, and culture.