CURRICULUM VITAE
Dr Leonard Sanderman (born 1991) is employed as Senior Lecturer in Organ and Historical Musicology at Leeds Conservatoire. He teaches Harmony & Counterpoint at the University of York, and serves as Interim Director of Music in the parish of St Peter & St Leonard, Horbury with St John, Horbury Bridge.
He has recently completed a PhD in Music on issues in the historiography and canonisation of liturgical music in high church parishes between 1827 and 1914. This research at the University of York was funded by a full AHRC studentship through the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities. Leonard studied Music at the University of Oxford and completed a Masters degree in English Church Music at the University of York with high distinction.
He was initially taught the organ by his father, and later by a.o. Sietze de Vries, Ben van Oosten, Clive Driskill-Smith, Steven Grahl, Ronny Krippner, and Nigel Allcoat. He participated in masterclasses with a.o. Hans Haselböck, Pieter van Dijk and Peter Williams. He was Organ Scholar at Keble College, Oxford and Chichester Cathedral. From 2014-2018, he worked as Director of Music at St Wilfrid, Harrogate. Leonard is an Associate of the Royal College of Organists.
Leonard is a prize-winning, commissioned composer, and contributed significantly to the Dutch Hymnal of 2013. He is internationally active as organist, frequently touring in Germany, The Netherlands, and the United States. He appeared live on BBC3 and features on various recordings, including his first solo organ CD from 2018, an album as choral conductor in 2019, and a second solo organ disc with music for Advent and Christmas on the German label.harp in 2020.
Leonard is a published author on church music and the organ. In 2018, he led an international team of researchers and musicians which transcribed, published, and recorded the complete sacred music of Alice Mary Smith, one of England's foremost women composers of the nineteenth century. In 2019, he was awarded a British Research Council Fellowship at the Library of Congress.