David Temple has been awarded an MBE in the 2018 New Year's Honours, for his services to music. He began his life as a musician when, at the age of eighteen, he joined the London Philharmonic Choir. He taught himself to read music and was, within weeks, singing under conductors such as Sir Georg Solti, Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, and Leopold Stokowski.
His passion for classical music drew him towards conducting, and after having made a number of commercial recordings he became the founding conductor of Crouch End Festival Chorus in 1984.
His extensive repertoire includes an impressive collection of commissions, from 1985 to 2018. With the Chorus he has conducted Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in a sold-out Royal Festival Hall and Harmonium by John Adams in the presence of the composer in the Barbican.
Released in 2017 is a landmark recording of JS Bach’s St John Passion (in English) with Chandos Records. He has also prepared the Chorus for concerts under conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Semyon Bychkov, Edward Gardner, and Jiří Bělohlávek.
David has also worked as a guest chorus master with the BBC Symphony Chorus and the London Symphony Chorus. He has recorded with Chandos Records, Signum Records, Hyperion, Meridian, Deux-Elles, Silva Classics, Decca, EMI, Warner Classics and Sony.
Since 2000, David has been Musical Director of the Hertfordshire Chorus; in June 2016 he recorded Will Todd’s Ode to a Nightingale and James McCarthy’s Codebreaker with the Chorus and the BBC Concert Orchestra for Signum Records. Will Todd's hugely popular Mass in Blue was also a Hertfordshire Chorus commission. David has toured extensively with the Chorus, in the UK with many visits to Sage Gateshead and also throughout Europe.
David relishes his collaborations with musicians from other genres, including Sir Ray Davies, Noel Gallagher, Ennio Morricone, and Hans Zimmer, all of whom are patrons of the Crouch End Festival Chorus. He has also worked with major rock bands such as Oasis, Take That and Muse.
In his work with Sir Ray Davies, he has toured the USA, appeared on the David Letterman Show (with New York's Dessoff Choirs) and on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. He also conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the 2011 Meltdown Festival.