Dr Michael Walsh
ThD, DMus, GTCL, FCCM, FTCL, FFCM, FMCM, FGMS, HonGCM
Fields: Music (Composition)

Dr. Michael Walsh studied singing and organ at the College of St Nicholas at the Royal School of Church Music and later Trinity College of Music where he was awarded the prestigious Ricordi Opera Prize for conducting and two others for choir training and research. His main performing interest has always been in sacred music, and after eighteen years as Head of Music of Bishop Luffa CofE Comprehensive School and a Lay Vicar with Chichester Cathedral Choir (and more recently Portsmouth Cathedral Choir) he now divides his time between composing, acting as a freelance organist, running MusicPrint, his own music engraving and typesetting business, and most recently as Design Director of the Better Book Company. He is a member of the Religious Society of St Simon, which is affiliated to The Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church.

Michael’s compositions cover a wide range, including two full-scale musicals for school choirs and orchestra (both of which were highly praised in the Times Educational Supplement), incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As you like it and the music for The Mysteries (in a kind of medieval/rock fusion). His setting of the Preces and Responses, (published by OUP) composed in 1982 for Alan Thurlow, is now widely performed by Cathedral choirs. He has composed sixteen Mass settings and his Latin Mass of the Holy Trinity for unaccompanied double choir is now regularly sung by the choirs of Chichester, Canterbury, Portsmouth and Worcester Cathedrals. His early music editions (published by Oxford University Press) of the Preces and Responses by John Reading and the Sixth Evening Service by Thomas Weelkes, together with his research into John Holmes and William Deane, have ensured him a worthy reputation as a scholar of early music and earned him a Research Fellowship of Trinity College of Music and a Doctorate in Theology (Religious Music) from Geneva Theological College.

In 2003, his contribution to church music was recognised by the award of an Honorary Membership of the Guild of Church Musicians (HonGCM) which he received that December at Lambeth Palace. He was also honoured to have been commissioned to compose a setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for the use of St Paul’s Cathedral Choir. It was first performed on July 19th 2003 year to great acclaim.