Music

A four generation line of church organists, and two decades of supporting worship in church, has shaped both my musicianship and my understanding of music's purpose and potential. I am really thrilled to hold the diploma of Colleague of the Royal College of Organists, along with ABRSM qualifications for Piano and Viola, and am working towards the Associate diploma. I currently support my local church of St Petroc, Harford as my primary posting, even managing to keep worship going through the pandemic with the strategic use of my accordion in the graveyard! I have previously supported Taizé services with Churches Together in Ivybridge, and prior to that have played in churches across many counties and denominations.

As an ensemble musician, I led the viola sections of multiple amateur orchestras and have sung bass in choirs for a wide range of major choral works. My focus has more recently shifted to composing and conducting, most recently directing my own Passion for a Good Friday service, written for full choir, organ and narrator, to a packed church. As a composer, I prefer to work in the liturgical tradition drawing on baroque counterpoint, folk melody, and the natural world for inspiration. My works to date include a five-movement partita, the Good Friday Passion, and an ongoing Sung Eucharist setting. A project to compose a voluntary for every week of the year is underway, including a fugue on the folk melody "Now is the Month of Maying".

Folk music, drawn from other areas of his life, informs much of my work, as does the intriguingly blurred boundary between it and liturgical music. I enjoy discovering how the Dartmoor folk tradition and sea shanties from around the coast, can be developed into new music for use in church.

In all of this, I seek primarily to enable; to create an environment in which people can experience music and spirituality on their own terms in a way in which they are comfortable. I like the organ bench at St Petroc's: I am nicely hidden from view.