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Born in Cardiff, Wales, Professor Iain Quinn is an award-winning organist, composer, and cultural historian with over one hundred publications across multiple disciplines. He is Professor of Organ and Coordinator of Sacred Music at Florida State University, Research Fellow in the Arts and Humanities, and Director of the annual Festival of the Creative Arts in the Office of the Vice President for Research. He is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.

Professor Quinn has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and a Visiting Composer in Chapel at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. As a composer, he has received commissions from churches across the USA and UK and from the American Guild of Organists. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, teaching at The Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory, the Rudolph Ganz Fellow at The Newberry Library, Chicago, the Alfred A. and Blanche W. Knopf Fellow at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin, and the Edith and Richard French research fellowship from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Earlier in his career, he received a fellowship from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for research on the historic organs of Brazil, and grants from Musica Britannica, Society for American Music, The Prince’s Trust, and the Music & Letters Trust. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries.

He began his study of the organ with Robert Court and Nicolas Kynaston, having also studied the piano and trumpet. In 1994, he moved to the USA to pursue advanced study at The Juilliard School, The Hartt School, University of Hartford, (BM summa cum laude), and the Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University (MM). His principal teachers were John Weaver, Larry Allen, Thomas Murray, and William Porter (improvisation). In 2009, he returned to the UK as a Doctoral Fellow at the University of Durham where he was also Director of Music at the College of St Hild and St Bede. He completed the PhD (Historical Musicology) in 2012. He also holds the diplomas of Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and Fellow of the Royal Schools of Music.

Professor Quinn has held college, church and cathedral positions in Durham (UK), New York, Connecticut, and New Mexico. He is currently Director of Music and Organist at First Presybterian Church. Thomasville, Georgia. He has taught at the Blackheath Conservatoire, London, Western Connecticut State University, the University of the South summer school, and Oundle for Organists (UK) and he gives regular masterclasses. He has presented lectures and conference papers in the UK, Europe, and North America, including papers for the Royal Musical Association-Society for Musicology in Ireland, College Music Society, American Musicological Society, and for universities throughout the USA.

He is the author of five books: The Genesis and Development of an English Sonata (Routledge – Royal Musical Association Monograph Series, 2017); The Organist in Victorian Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Music and Religion in the writings of Ian McEwan (Boydell and Brewer, 2023); Rudolph Ganz, Patriotism, and Standardization of The Star-Spangled Banner, 1907-1958 (Routledge, 2023), Cultural Dissonance: Brexit Reconsidered (The Lutterworth Press/Boydell and Brewer, 2026). He is also the editor of Studies in English Organ Music (Routledge, 2018) and Life and Letters of John Bacchus Dykes (Wipf and Stock, 2021). Further scholarly writings have been published in Tempo, Notes (MLA), Journal of Victorian Culture, The American Organist, The Organ, Church History, and Interpreting Historical Keyboard Music (Ashgate). He has edited critical editions of Samuel Barber (2 vv) (G. Schirmer), Carl Czerny (2 vv), John Goss (A-R Editions), Ernest Bloch, Corelli-Czerny, Robert Papperitz, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Ut Orpheus Edizioni), and volumes 1 and 7 of the Edward Elgar Complete Edition. He is also the editor of the series English Organ Sonatas (Ut Orpheus Edizioni). His reconstruction and publication of the early choral work of Samuel Barber, Christmas Eve, was the subject of interviews for American Public Media’s Performance Today and Pipedreams that were heard on National Public Radio together with performances by the Harvard University Choir.

He has given performances in many of the world’s most important musical centers including London (St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral), Cambridge (King’s College, St. John’s College, Trinity College), Oxford (Queen’s College), Haarlem (St. Bavo), Berlin (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche), Lisbon (Sé), Melbourne (Melba Hall), Moscow (Gnessin Academy), Washington (National Cathedral and National Shrine), New York (St. Thomas Fifth Avenue and Alice Tully Hall) and Hong Kong (Cultural Centre). He has also performed at many international festivals, including Tender is the North (Barbican Centre, London), Cambridge Summer Music (UK), Basically Bach (New York), Festival Barocco (Rome), Closer to Bach (Gdansk), 31 Days of Organ Music (Krakow), Dark Days Music Festival (Reykjavik), Dundee Summer Festival (Scotland), Cardiff Festival (Wales), Welsh Arts Festival (San Francisco), Orgue et Couleurs (Montreal) and the Göteborg International Organ Academy, Sweden.

His choral and organ works are published by Church Music Publishing, Encore Publications, GIA Music, and Paraclete Press. He has recorded twenty CDs as an organist, conductor or composer that are available on the Chandos, ESO Records, Guild, Hyperion, Naxos, Raven, and Regent labels. His most recent recordings include the Poulenc, Hindemith, Pinkham works for Organ and Orchestra with Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra (ESO Records); Haydn Organ Concertos with Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo (Chandos); Vincent Persichetti Organ Works (Naxos);  Zoltán Kodály Organ Works with works of Dohnányi, Novák, Sokola, Wiedermann. The choir and organists of Selwyn College, Cambridge have recorded a CD of his organ and choral works, The Garment of Holiness (Regent), and the Harvard University Choir have recorded his anthem Save us, good Lord (Harvard). His compositions have frequently been featured on BBC broadcasts including a televised performance of his anthem Christus est stella matutina with the Durham University Chamber Choir on Songs of Praise. This episode examined the life of the Venerable Bede and was filmed on The Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

Professor Quinn is the principal faculty advisor for the installation of the Rockwood Organ at Florida State University to be built by Paul Fritts & Co. Organ Builders of Tacoma, Washington.