Patrick McCarthy originally trained as a singer at the Guildhall and the London Opera Centre and for many years worked with most of the leading opera companies in the U.K. and Eire, and with many choral societies. Some of the older members of today's audiences may remember him replacing an ailing soloist at a televised Albert Hall Prom performance of Carmina Burana with LSO and Chorus under Andre Previn back in 1974.
He founded the Colchester Bach Choir in 1992 and has since directed this choir in many concerts, ranging from Schultz to Elgar, including both Bach passions, the B minor Mass and over twenty church cantatas. The choir was featured twenty three times on the ITV Sunday Morning programme and was seen in Anglia TV's Winter Wonderland five times over Christmas 2004.
Patrick currently has a busy schedule as musical director of the Ipswich Bach Choir, Witham and Dovercourt Choral Societies, the Harwich Festival Concert and the Colchester Philharmonic. Recent concerts have included Handel's Solomon, Sullivan's Golden Legend, and Festival Te Deum, Orff's Carmina Burana, the Verdi and Brahams Requiems, Opera Galas, Beethoven nights, Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Schubert's E Flat Mass, Britten's St.Nicholas and Dvorak's Stabat Mater.
He is still often heard as a tenor soloist, having recently performed The Creation in Germany twice, Elijah at Brentwood Cathedral and the Monteverdi Vespers, and released a fourth CD foy Hyperion with Peter Holman and The Parley of Instruments. At Easter 2001 he both conducted and sang the Evangelist in Bach's St John Passion with the Witham Choral Society and in 2003 sang the Evangelist in the St Matthew Passion for Suffolk Villages Festival, for whom he has performed regularly.
On Palm Sunday 2002 he conducted the St Matthew's Passion at Snape Maltings and returned there for Elijah in 2004. In March 2005 he conducted a rare revival of Elgar's Caractacus, a performance much praised by the Elgar Society and directed The Dream of Gerontius at Snape.