Christopher Gray

Christopher Gray took up his current post as Director of Music at St John’s College Cambridge in April 2023. With responsibilities centreing around the College’s celebrated choir and organ, he works with the Choristers, Choral Scholars, Lay Clerks and Organ Scholars to provide music that enhances the liturgy of the beautiful Gilbert Scott chapel, upholding a tradition that dates from the 1670s.

After his early musical education in his hometown of Bangor, Northern Ireland, Christopher became Assistant Organist at St George’s Parish Church, Belfast. At the age of 18 he moved to England to take up the organ scholarship at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read music. A Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, Christopher studied the organ with David Sanger and Nicolas Kynaston at Cambridge. He was subsequently taught by Margaret Phillips at the Royal College of Music, where he was a post-graduate student and a prize-winner. During this time, he also held the organ scholarship at Guildford Cathedral, working with Stephen Farr and Geoffrey Morgan.

In 2000 Christopher was appointed Assistant Director of Music at Truro Cathedral, working closely with Andrew Nethsingha and then Robert Sharpe. In 2008 he became Director of Music, taking on responsibility for the cathedral choir and its seven sung services each week, as well as the Father Willis organ. Under his direction, Truro Cathedral Choir has recorded extensively, including a series of single-composer albums that have consistently received generous praise from critics in the international classical press, with three CDs receiving ‘Editor’s Choice’ recommendations in Gramophone. He has directed the choir in dozens of live broadcasts for national radio and television, including BBC Radio 3 Evening Concerts. During his time at Truro, Christopher commissioned new pieces of music from some of the UK’s leading composers, including Paul Drayton, Graham Fitkin, Gabriel Jackson, Sir James MacMillan, Sasha Johnson Manning, Russell Pascoe, Philip Stopford and Dobrinka Tabakova. Under his direction the Choir has broadcast and recorded with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the City of London Sinfonia. As Musical Director of Three Spires Singers and Orchestra Christopher has conducted most of the large-scale choral repertoire.