Murray Forbes Somerville, Artistic Director Emeritus, Music City Baroque & Former Gund University Organist and Choirmaster (1990–2003), The Memorial Church at Harvard University

The English choral conductor and organist, Murray Forbes Somerville, was born in London and raised in Rhodesia. He studied under Karl Richter in Munich, Germany, at Oxford University (where he was Organ Scholar of New College, under Sir David Lumsden), under Robert Baker at the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and with William Porter at New England Conservatory.



Murray Forbes Somerville is noted as choral and orchestral conductor, organ recitalist on three continents, workshop leader and scholar. He served St. James's Church in West Hartford, Connecticut, and the Cathedral of St. Luke in Orlando, Florida, where he also founded the Orlando Deanery Boychoir. In 1990 he was appointed as Harvard's sixth University Organist and Choirmaster, a post he held until 2003. In this post he presented regular recitals, directed the Harvard University Choir for concerts, services, tours and many critically acclaimed recordings, as well as playing for services in Memorial Church. As curator of the University Organs, he also oversaw the recital series on the Flentrop organ in Busch Hall and the Fisk instrument in Memorial Church. He is an authority on the music of John Knowles Paine, his nineteenth century Harvard predecessor, who was the subject of his doctoral research. Formerly Music Director of the Bach Festival at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, he was also Founding Conductor of the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra; he has conducted major symphony orchestras in England and the US. 

He has presented recitals in such places as Westminster Abbey, Freiberg Cathedral and the Methuen (Massachusetts) Memorial Music Hall; recent engagements have included King’s College Chapel in Cambridge and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC.  He has released several solo recordings on a variety of labels; his most recent disc, on Fisk Op. 134 in Nashville (almost the twin of Op. 139), was awarded five stars by Choir and Organ magazine.