Paul Spicer began his musical training as a chorister at New College, Oxford. He later studied with Herbert Howells and Richard Popplewell (organ) at the Royal College of Music in London, winning the Walford Davies Organ Prize in his final year. His career has taken him from Uppingham School and Ellesmere College, where he taught music, to the BBC, as a recording producer.  He became Senior Producer for BBC Radio 3 in the Midlands in 1990, and later Artistic Director of the Lichfield International Arts Festival and the Abbotsholme Arts Society, posts he relinquished in 2001 in order to pursue a completely freelance musical career.  Today he is in great demand as a recording producer, as a composer, and as a conductor.

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As a composer, Spicer receives regular commissions, and these have included an Elgar Commission for the Worcester Three Choirs Festival for which he wrote A Song for Birds, a song cycle for Ian Partridge. I Fagiolini commissioned an a cappella choral work, Dies Natalis, which was premièred at the Purcell Room in February 1995 and broadcast by them later from the Wigmore Hall on Radio 3, and a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for the choir of New College, Oxford was also broadcast on Radio 3.  More recent commissions include a two-hour Easter Oratorio for the Lichfield Festival in 2000, described by The Independent as "almost operatic in its inherent drama" and as being "a major contribution to the choral society repertoire".  In 2002 he completed Glory be to God for dappled things for Kingston Parish Church, and June 2003 saw the first performance of The Deciduous Cross for choir, winds, and brass. It received excellent reviews, including "it is Spicer's wide-reaching musical literacy, musical ear and intelligence that combine to support the natural empathy he has with his texts" from The Church Times.

His catalogue contains choral and orchestral works, instrumental, vocal and chamber music. He has also written a Piano Sonata for Margaret Fingerhut, premièred at the 1998 Gloucester Three Choirs Festival, and an organ work, Prelude in homage to Maurice Duruflé for Adrian Partington, which was also performed at and broadcast from the Three Choirs Festival. Recent commissions include a major organ work, Kiwi Fireworks, based on the New Zealand national anthem. This was written for Christopher Herrick's Organ Fireworks series for Hyperion Records, recorded at Wellington Town Hall, NZ (and now recorded for the second time for Guild Records and also published).

A recent sequence of anthem commissions only serves to enhance his reputation as a writer of first-class choral music.  October 2003 saw the first performance of his most important anthem to date, The Prayer of St Cuthbert, for unaccompanied double choir.  Commissioned by the Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral, it was written for the enthronement of the new Bishop. The final Eucharist of the Dean of Lichfield in October 2004 prompted the Friends of Lichfield Cathedral to commission Michael, the Great Prince, shall Arise, a setting for SATB and organ of a text from the book of Daniel.  Spicer's skills as a recital organist and an expert choir trainer ensure that both organ and chorus parts provide an exciting and worthwhile challenge to performers. A third anthem, Tu es Petrus, for SATB choir and organ, was commissioned by a New York Church in memory of a former Rector, and as 2004 drew to a close, Spicer also prepared two Christmas pieces to add to Christmas, written the previous year for the Birmingham Bach Choir.

As a highly accomplished choral conductor, Paul Spicer has conducted Bach Choirs in Chester and Leicester (and the Chester Festival Chorus), and in September 1992 took over the conductorship of the Birmingham Bach Choir, one of the leading amateur choirs of the Midlands. He is also the founder and director of the Finzi Singers. This well-known professional London-based chamber choir of 18 singers has achieved an international reputation through their many recordings on the Chandos label, through concerts and festivals, and through the broadcasts they do for the BBC. The group specialises in British 20th century repertoire of which Paul Spicer is acknowledged to be a leading exponent, and receives constant acclaim from the critics. The Gramophone, for instance, singled them out as "the best small specialised professional chamber choir, directed with outstanding musicianship by Paul Spicer".

As a conductor of choral workshops, he has worked in recent years with the BBC, for the Making Music (NFMS) regions, for individual choral societies in different parts of the country, and for more specialised advanced courses such as those at Eton or Hereford. He has conducted Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony and Dona Nobis Pacem for Making Music, and Elgar's Gerontius, The Kingdom, and The Music Makers, and is regularly asked to workshop his own music. 

In 1995 he was appointed Conductor of the Royal College of Music Chamber Choir, where he is Professor of Choral Conducting, having helped to design the new and innovative postgraduate course (M.Mus) for choral conductors.  He conducts the Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, and he is a guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir.  In September 2000 he took up an appointment as Conductor of the Whitehall Choir in London, and in 2003 celebrated his tenth anniversary as Conductor of the Birmingham Bach Choir.

As an organist, Paul Spicer has played in many of the major venues in the UK, has given recitals abroad, most recently in Iceland, and has broadcast recitals for BBC Radio 3. He is also in considerable demand as a record producer for a number of companies, including Hyperion, Chandos, Harmonia Mundi, Virgin Classics, CRD, ASV, Meridian, and Guild.  He has done a great deal of research on the music of Herbert Howells, his composition teacher, and has been responsible for the rehabilitation of much of his music, both choral and orchestral, which has now been performed and recorded. He lectures on Howells' music, and in 1994 was commissioned to write a biography of Howells for Seren Books. He is a contributor to the New Dictionary of National Biography, and his anthology of English Pastoral Partsongs for Oxford University Press has also been warmly received by choral directors and critics alike. He was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts in 1999, became an Honorary Research Fellow of Birmingham University in 2000, and was also appointed by the Bishop of Lichfield to the new Cathedral Council.

To visit Paul Spicer's website, click here

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