Lunchtime Concert: David Burchell

Organ concert 'Heavenly Bodies'
Played by David Burchell, Dunedin City Organist.

With Matariki approaching, David will play a short programme for of music for the organ inspired by heavenly bodies – stars, planets, sun and moon. The concert will include music by Josef Rheinberger, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Louis Vierne and an excerpt from The Planets by Gustav Holst.

David Burchell

David Burchell is Dunedin City Organist, Organist and Choir Director of St Joseph’s Cathedral, Dunedin, and Senior Organist at All Saints’ Church, Dunedin. He is also organ tutor and graduation organist for the University of Otago. Away from the organ, he is Musical Director of City Choir Dunedin, and Musical Director of ‘The Little Box of Operas’, a company specialising in chamber opera.

He studied at Oxford University and was Organ Scholar and later Assistant Organist at New College, working for six years with the renowned chapel choir. This included a term in charge of the choir, television and radio broadcasts, and participation in the recording of many CDs as organ accompanist and soloist. He has also worked as an organ builder and a university lecturer. For eleven years he was Organist and Choir Director at Paul’s Cathedral, Dunedin, and since moving to Dunedin in 1999 he has made a considerable impression on the city’s musical life, as a choir trainer, organist, organ teacher, piano accompanist and also as an orchestral conductor with the Dunedin Youth Orchestra, Dunedin Symphony Orchestra (formerly Southern Sinfonia), Dunedin City Wind Orchestra and St Kilda Brass. He performs throughout New Zealand as an organ recitalist and accompanist. He also maintains and tunes pipe organs and tunes pianos.

David has appeared as organ soloist with the Southern Sinfonia in Poulenc’s Organ Concerto, Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony, and in the première of Anthony Ritchie’s Organ Overture. He also plays the harpsichord, and has performed several of Bach’s harpsichord concertos. Excerpts from his 2020 organ concert at Auckland Town Hall are occasionally broadcast by RNZ Concert, and the whole recital can be viewed online, via the Auckland Town Hall Organ website.

NCMA’s Lunchtime Concert Series is proudly sponsored by Nelson Pine Industries.
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Please contact Nelson Centre of Musical Arts if you require wheelchair seating on 03 548 9477 or music@ncma.nz.