BIO

SARAH MACDONALD is a Canadian-born organist, conductor, and composer, living in the UK, and she currently holds the positions of Fellow and Director of Music at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and Director of the Girl Choristers at Ely Cathedral. She has been at Selwyn since 1999, and is the first woman to hold such a post in an Oxbridge Chapel.  Sarah studied piano, organ, and conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Music's Glenn Gould School in Toronto with Leon Fleisher, Marek Jablonski, and John Tuttle. She then went on to Cambridge University as Organ Scholar of Robinson College, where she read for a degree in Music and studied the organ with David Sanger.

Sarah came to the UK from Canada in 1992 as Organ Scholar of Robinson College, Cambridge after studying piano, organ, and conducting at The Royal Conservatory of Music's Glenn Gould School in Toronto with Leon Fleisher, Marek Jablonski, and John Tuttle. At Cambridge she read for a degree in Music, and studied the organ with David Sanger. Sarah has played numerous recitals and conducted choirs on tours throughout the UK, North America, the Middle East, New Zealand, and much of mainland Europe. She has made over 35 recordings, variously in the guises of pianist, organist, conductor, and producer, and currently works most frequently with Regent Records. Sarah is a winner of the Royal College of Organists' (RCO) coveted Limpus Prize, and has taught organ and conducting for Eton Choral Courses, Oundle for Organists, the Jennifer Bate Organ Academy, and courses run by the RCO. For its first decade, she was a Director of the annual Girl Chorister Course at St Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, in New York City, and she is in demand as a director for international residential courses run by the RSCM and other organisations. Sarah holds the Fellowship diploma of the RCO, and is an Examiner for the RCO and for the Cambridge University Music Faculty. She has had numerous choral compositions published by Encore Publications, the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM), August Press, and St James Music Press, and is series editor for an exciting new series with Selah Publishing, featuring liturgical choral works by female composers. Sarah also writes a popular monthly column for the American Guild of Organists' magazine The American Organist, called 'UK Report'. In 2018 Sarah received the honorary ARSCM in recognition of her contribution to choral music in the UK and Canada, and the citation made particular mention of her support of contemporary British composers.