|
The Canadian organist, choral conductor and composer, David Cameron, was born and educated in Toronto, where his teachers included Catherine Palmer, Douglas Bodle, Paul Murray and Eric Rollinson. Later graduate study in Potsdam, New York, St Louis and Chicago concentrated upon applied musicology and composition.
In 1966 David Cameron moved to Kingston, Ontario, to become Director of Music at Chalmers United Church, a position from which he retired in 2010. He also taught organ and other subjects for Queen's School of Music from the inception of the B.Mus. program at the university, in the fall of 1969, until 2011.
As Music Director of the concert choir and chamber orchestra Melos, David Cameron's concert credits include thirty-seven George Frideric Handel's Messiah, most of the standard settings of the Requiem, both J.S. Bach's Passions (BWV 244, BWV 245) and the Mass in B minor (BWV 232), Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, and a long list of other works: the Maurice Duruflé's Requiem, J.S. Bach's Ascension Oratorio (BWV 11), W.A. Mozart's Great Mass in C minor, K. 427, Haydn's Paukenmesse and several performances of his Lord Nelson Mass; staged versions of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, and dozens of smaller works. In recent years Melos has been the only professional chamber orchestra between Toronto and Montreal to specialize in authentic performances of early music. In the fall of 2013 David Cameron retired to become Melos' Music Director Emeritus.
At Chalmers Church David Cameron directed a semi-professional choir, which broadcast live every Sunday, performing repertoire largely from the English cathedral tradition, but with substantial representation of music by Canadians and other living composers. He is an active composer and the author of several harmony and counterpoint textbooks. A Fellow of Trinity College of London and of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, David Cameron served as the College's fiftieth President in 2006-2008. In 2014 he continued as Chair of the National Examination Committee. In 2013 the College awarded him the diploma of FRCCO (honoris causa), just fifty years after he earned the FRCCO by examination. He currently lives in Kingston, Ontario. |
