TIM PATIENT – ORGANIST

Tim Patient is the Director of Music at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Eye, a post he has held since Advent Sunday 2022. 

He was born in Chelmsford but moved to Norwich as a child and began his organ studies in 1977 when he became a Norwich Diocesan Organ Scholar, studying with the late Kenneth Ryder at St. Peter Mancroft Church. After leaving school he went to Westhill College of Education, Birmingham, where he trained to be a teacher. He taught for two years in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham before returning to Norfolk in 1989, where he has been music subject leader at two primary schools.

He was an assistant organist at the Community of All Hallows, Ditchingham, from 1991 until the dispersal of the community in 2018 and was an assistant organist at St. Peter Mancroft Church until 2005. In 1990 he gained his Performer’s ARCM diploma; in 1994 he gained all the major prizes, including the Limpus Prize, in the ARCO and during 1999 he gained two prizes in the practical part of the FRCO examinations.

More recently he has taken part in masterclasses with people such as Lionel Rogg (St. Peter Mancroft Church), Dame Gillian Weir (Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, London), Bine Bryndorf (Trinity College, Cambridge), Jean-Luc Perrot (Souvigny, France), Alexis Droy (Moulins, France), Sietze de Vries (Trinity Hall, Cambridge) and William Whitehead (Chelmsford Cathedral).

He has given recitals in many parts of East Anglia, and also on the organ in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London and in France. He has twice given a complete performance of Messiaen’s ‘Livre du Saint Sacrement. He is the rehearsal accompanist of the Norwich Philharmonic Choir and is the General Secretary of the Norfolk Organists’ Association. 

Recitals in 2023 have included St. Peter Mancroft Church, Norwich; King’s Lynn Minster; The Chapel of Queen’s College, Cambridge; St. Mary’s Church, Woodbridge; and St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church in Eye.