RICHARD LYNE was educated at King’s College School, Wimbledon and went on to study at the Royal School of Church Music and the Royal College of Music.
At the RSCM his organ teacher was Michael Fleming, who fired his enthusiasm for plainsong. At the RCM he studied the organ with Richard Popplewell, John Birch and Sidney Campbell and harmony with Adrian Cruft and Herbert Sumsion. A graduate of London University, Richard Lyne also holds a master’s degree from Nottingham University in the Performance and Editing of Baroque & Renaissance music. He has given recitals in many churches and cathedrals in this country and on both sides of the United States, and as a choral director has regularly conducted workshops with the Anglican Singers of Haarlem in the Netherlands.
Richard grew up in East Sheen (Palewell Park to be precise) and at the age of seven joined Christ Church Choir, where he was later appointed Organist. Subsequently, he has been Director of Music at St Anne & Agnes, Gresham Street in the City of London, St John’s, Hyde Park Crescent, St Mary Oatlands, Weybridge and most recently St Michael & All Angels, Barnes.
He has been a professor of harmony and aural at the Royal College of Music since 1978 and has taught for the Open University, at the Welsh College of Music & Drama and at Kingston University. In 2008 he re-launched Howells Singers, a choir he founded in 1984 to be a living memorial to Herbert Howells in Barnes where the composer lived for many years. Richard in also Hon General Editor of the Church Music Society, and a senior theory examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.