One of today’s most popular English composers, John Rutter (1945) is the author of original Christmas carols as well as large-scale choral works such as Requiem, Gloria, Magnificat, Mass for the Children, Te Deum and others. A graduate of Clare College, Cambridge, where he sang in the choir, he later himself became Director of Music at the College (1975-1979) and under his conducting the choir gained international acclaim. In 1981 he founded the Cambridge Singers, a choir with whom he toured extensively and made many recordings of mainly sacred choral music with Rutter’s own record company, Collegium Records. They also publish his works.

He is an honorary member of the Westminster Choir College of Princeton (1980), a member of the Guild of Church Musicians (1988). For his contribution to church music he received an academic degree (‘Lambeth degree’) from the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1996. He was made a Fellow of the Middle Temple Honourable Society for his important role in the Temple Festival in 2008. Rutter is also Vice-President of the Joyful Company of Singers Association, President of The Bach Choir (founded in 1876) and President of the Association of British Choral Conductors (ABCD).