Philip Barnes

Philip Barnes (born 16 November 1958) is an Anglo-American choral conductor and teacher. He is currently artistic director of the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus, director of music at Third Baptist Church in Grand Center, St. Louis, and on the faculty of John Burroughs School, Ladue.

Biography

Born in Great Britain, Philip Barnes attended the Manchester Grammar School, and studied classics at the University of Bristol. He then won a Gratrix Postgraduate Fellowship at Manchester University, where he was awarded a Master’s degree in music. Finally, he earned a PGCE in classics from King’s College, London. Subsequently, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was awarded an honorary doctorate from The Aquinas Institute at St. Louis University in recognition of his services to the artistic life of St. Louis. Other awards and recognitions include a Belltower Scholarship from the English-Speaking Union, an ‘Ovatio’ from the Classical Association of the Middle West & South, and a Fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation in Northern Italy.

His musical training began as a choirboy, later singing as a choral scholar, lay clerk and lay vicar in various English cathedral and chapel choirs. These included the cathedrals in Bristol, Hereford, Norwich and Wells, and in London he sang at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, St. Martin’s-in-the-fields, and St. Peter ad vincula in the Tower of London. He also deputized often at St. Paul’s Cathedral and other prominent London churches and sang freelance on many recordings (including John Rutter’s Cambridge Singers) and at concerts (including Ex Cathedra). Coming to St. Louis in 1988, Barnes sang for several years at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral where he was also Assistant Choirmaster. He participated in several productions of the Holy Roman Repertory Company on public radio and was a freelance singer in many select ensembles. He was also a member of the octet at Temple Shaare Emeth, and during return visits to the UK sang on soundtracks for various television and film productions. After several years downtown, Barnes moved to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Ladue, and sang as precentor at Evensongs and assisted at morning worship. In the late 1990s he was appointed Choirmaster at Holy Communion Episcopal Church, University City, where he remained until 2003. In 2016, he resumed his church work, becoming Director of Music at Third Baptist Church in Grand Center..

Philip Barnes is steeped in choral and vocal music, training initially through the programs devised by the Royal School of Church music, eventually earning its St. Nicholas Senior Medal. He studied voice at school and university, including Nick Powell at the Royal Northern College of Music, and participated in various masterclasses in the UK and USA. As an undergraduate he ran an ad hoc choir, and upon moving to Hereford Cathedral, he co-founded the Hereford Chamber Choir.

Barnes’s choral experience provided a practical training for directing choirs, and it was this that led to his appointment in 1989 as Artistic Director of the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus, one of the leading professional choral ensembles in the Midwest. With that choir he has developed a reputation both as an outstanding choir trainer (named in 2006 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper as ‘Conductor of the Year’), and for his imaginative and scholarly performances of repertoire drawn from a wide range of sources. He has an extensive knowledge of Renaissance music and is particularly informed about the ‘English Musical Renaissance’ of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. In addition, he has conducted just about all the a cappella works of the leading German Romantics, especially Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. Finally, he is an advocate both for women composers and for new music and has premiered a large number of works from contemporary composers from around the world. His training as a classicist has led to an interest in choral settings of ancient texts, both in the original language and in translation. This has manifested itself in various translations and paraphrases Barnes has made for various composers, including Kerensa Briggs, Sasha Johnson Manning and Ned Rorem. A particular noteworthy project was his translation of all the choruses in Sophocles’s tragedy, ‘Antigone.’ Barnes has written a few works for choir, including a set of Responses, three carols (“Lullaby”; “Adam Lay Ybounden”, and “Balulalow”) and “The Lord At First Did Adam Make” (published by MorningStar). He has also authored numerous reviews for the “American Choral Journal” and contributed many articles to print publications in the USA and the UK.

His extensive experience and research have led to Barnes being invited to lecture widely in North & South America and in Europe, and he teaches each summer at the Chautauqua Institution (NY). His presentations often address the intersection of text and music, and are supported not only by his musical training, but also his experience teaching the classics, most notably at John Burroughs School in St. Louis, where he joined the faculty in 1988. Prior to that he held similar positions in the UK at the Sacred Heart of Mary School in Upminster, Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, Kensington, and Belmont Abbey School. At Burroughs, he has taught Latin and Music History and introduced Greek to the curriculum shortly after he arrived. In support of these language classes, Barnes also organizes frequent foreign study trips, and is passionate about the value of foreign travel for language students. Partly because of this he has served and supported the Vergilian Society of America for three decades, serving as a trustee on two occasions. Other societies he has served in the past include the Artist Presentation Society of St. Louis, and he continues to devise and present a weekly show on the local classical radio station in St. Louis, Classic 107.3

References

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