DEAN APPLEGATE holds degrees from Linfield College, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School and the University of Oxford, with post-graduate studies in Gregorian chant under Dr. Mary Berry, Newnham College, Cambridge, and Sr. Claudia Foltz, SNJM, Marylhurst University. In 1997, he and Dr. Richard Marlow from Trinity College Cambridge formed the William Byrd Festival. He has served as administrator of the festival for the past twenty-three years, and he was director of Cantores in Ecclesia for twenty-seven years before he handed over leadership of the choir to his son Blake in 2010. His life’s work has been to advocate the use of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony in actual liturgical circumstances. He was the Director of Music at Holy Rosary Church from 1981 - 2022.