David Lee was brought up in Didsbury, Manchester, and sketched his first hymn-tune while at primary school. He has been active in church music since his early teens. While an undergraduate (Geophysics) at Grey College, Durham he was a founder member of the music team at St. Nicholas Church. Following a postgraduate year at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (M.Sc., Computing Science) he returned to Durham to work in the University’s Computing Service, and rejoined St. Nicholas where he later became deputy leader of the music group.
These experiences, and involvement in some much smaller outlying churches in Co. Durham and in the local hospital chaplaincy, planted an increasingly acute awareness of the wide diversity of music required for the service and mission of the contemporary church. The importance of music-group styles, but also the narrow and somewhat superficial range of its music commercially available, led him towards writing music in such styles, attempting to combine quality with practical simplicity.
In 1995 the family settled at St. John’s Church, Nevilles Cross, Durham, where these strands and ideas of writing were actively encouraged and began weaving together. In particular these included recovering the psalms (which, worryingly, are almost entirely lost to corporate evangelical and charismatic worship) in ways sympathetic to music-groups and small churches, but still teachable with minimal liturgical intrusion, week by week.
In 1998, he was invited to present a paper Top-down or bottom-up: restoring the balance to the World Church Music Symposium in London, pleading for a recognition of the importance both of the “small church” and also of a range of music for all churches.
Following that, he was invited to join the Durham Diocesan Liturgical Committee music subgroupwhere he initiated and fostered a short course to give “small church” musicians a basic confidence-building grounding in music for worship.
David is a member of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and from 2007 to 2013 served on its executive committee. He was also an early encourager of the Christian Songwriting Organisation email group.