Thomas Dunn

Thomas Burt Dunn (December 21, 1925 – October 26, 2008) was an American musician, conductor and music editor known for his performances of Baroque music. He is considered an important figure in the development of the 20th-century early music revival and adoption of historically informed performance practices in the United States.

Early years Dunn was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, on December 21, 1925, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of educator Wendell E. Dunn and younger brother of chemical engineer-inventor Wendell E. Dunn, Jr. He was also the nephew of civil engineer Everett Dunn. He loved music as a child and at about age 11 he was named assistant organist of a Baltimore church. At 16 he became the organist of another local church and was named director of its professional choir not long afterward.

Musical career In the 1950s he was a music director for several churches in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and in 1957 moved to New York City to become music director at the Church of the Incarnation. In 1959, he succeeded Arthur Mendel and Alfred Mann as director of New York's Cantata Singers. He expanded the group's repertoire to include 19th and 20th-century works, but gained notice for presentations rarities from its traditional repertoire, especially Handel's Belshazzar and Rameau's Les Indes galantes. Harold Schonberg assessed a 1959 concert of works by Purcell and Britten with these words: He gained a wider reputation with a series of concerts of works by Bach and Handel at Carnegie Hall in 1961–2. In 1963, he presented Handel's Messiah four times in four different editions, further enhancing his reputation as a conductor of Baroque music.

Dunn appeared as an imposter on the January 31, 1966 episode of the CBS game show To Tell the Truth. He revealed his true identity at the end of the segment.

This led to his appointment in 1967 as music director of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, a post he held until 1986. During his tenure there, he transformed the organization from a traditional amateur oratorio society to a fully professional ensemble with a repertoire that ranged from early music to modern works.

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