Professor Patrick Russill is one of the leading figures in English church music. Following organ studies with Nicholas Danby while organ scholar at New College, Oxford, he was appointed Organist of the London Oratory in 1977 at the age of 23 in succession to Ralph Downes, on Downes’ nomination. Between 1984 and 2003 he was Director of the Oratory Junior Choir and in 1999 he was appointed Director of Music at the Oratory, assuming overall responsibility for its choral tradition and especially for its famous professional choir, which under his direction ‘remains among the finest mixed-voice choirs in the country’ (Choir & Organ).
Now Emeritus Head of Choral Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music, between 1997 and 2024, Patrick developed the UK’s first and most successful conservatoire choral conducting course. He was also Visiting Professor of Choral Conducting at the Leipzig Hochschule für Musik und Theater 2001-2023 and has taught at conservatoires in Stockholm, Helsinki, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Strasbourg and Cluj-Napoca (Romania). He was Chief Examiner of the Royal College of Organists 2005-2017. In 2022 he was awarded a personal professorial chair and is now an Emeritus Professor of the University of London.
As an organ recitalist he has played at the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, in Europe, Asia and all over the UK. He introduced the reconstructed Tudor organs of the Early English Organ Project to London’s South Bank in a Queen Elizabeth Hall recital acclaimed by the Independent on Sunday, in its classical review of 2007, as the outstanding London keyboard concert of the year.
He has published articles on various aspects of the Catholic musical tradition including early Tudor liturgical organ music, baroque organ music of Catholic Germany (in The Cambridge Companion to the Organ), Howells’s Latin church music and Dupré’s Vespers as well as editions of choral music by Sweelinck and Howells in particular. He was Musical Editor of The Catholic Hymn Book (1998) and a contributor to New Grove.
Patrick is a Vice-President of the Herbert Howells Society, Chairman of the Church Music Society, and an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music and of the Cathedral Organists Association. In 2015 he was honoured by the Association of British Choral Directors with its annual Chair’s Award for Choral Leadership and in 2023 he was awarded the Medal of the Royal College of Organists (its highest honour).
He also holds Fellowships honoris causa of the Royal College of Organists, the Royal School of Church Music and the Guild of Church Musicians, in recognition of his seminal influence on three decades of students, many of whom are now in significant church and cathedral posts, and for his influence on and contribution to church music in the UK. He is also a trustee of the Organists Charitable Trust, and of the Nicholas Danby Trust, which supports young organists of outstanding promise, by awarding scholarships and bursaries for conservatoire study within Europe.
In 2024 Patrick was honoured with a Papal Knighthood of the Order of St Gregory.
He combines this with a busy freelance recital career and the post of School Organist at Westminster School.
He is Assistant Director of Music at the Oratory and Director of the London Oratory Junior Choir which, in addition to its liturgical duties.
Ivan Leung became our ninth Pettman organ scholar in September 2024.
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