David Skinner

David Skinner is a British musicologist and choir director. He works at the University of Cambridge, where he is the director of music at Sidney Sussex College and is an affiliated lecturer, teaching historical and practical topics from the medieval and Renaissance periods. He is the founder of the vocal consort Alamire, and the cofounder of the vocal ensembles Magdala and The Cardinall's Musick. He has produced more than 25 recordings. He has been associated with a number of award-winning projects (including two Gramophone Awards and three runners up; Diapason d'Or; Deutsche Schallplatten; and a Grammy nomination).

Early life and education Skinner grew up in the United States. Skinner was educated at the University of Edinburgh. From 1989 to 1994, Skinner was a choral scholar at Christ Church of the University of Oxford. Skinner is the artistic director for the group,

Skinner founded the consort Alamire in 2005. With the music group Fretwork and the Choir of Sidney Sussex College, Alamire won "Editor's Choice" and "CD of the Month" in Gramophone for February 2008. although the death of Martin Souter, Obsidian's founder, interrupted this project. Subsequent releases have appeared on the Inventa Records label.

Skinner received a 2015 Gramophone Award for Alamire's recording of The Spy's Choirbook in this series, and their next recording, of Anne Boleyn's Songbook, won Australia's Limelight Award and was nominated for a BBC Music Magazine Award. The last project in the series to date built on Skinner's identification of Henry VIII's last queen Catherine Parr as author of an alternative text for one of Thomas Tallis's major motets.

His 2012 release of the works of the Renaissance composer Thomas Weelkes with the Choir of Sidney Sussex College was nominated for a Gramophone Award as well, with critics praising the choir's "exemplary ensemble and intonation, beauty of tone, clarity of diction, and interpretive expressiveness".

Personal life He is the father of singer-songwriter Robin Daniel Skinner, known professionally as Cavetown.