David Sinden is an organist and conductor noted for his “centered leadership and solid musicianship.” He is the Organist and Director of Music at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, St. Louis, Missouri, where he plays the church’s 56-rank Mander organ and directs the St. Peter’s Choir, the St. Peter’s Singers, and a chorister program affiliated with the Royal School of Church Music.

Concert performances with the St. Peter’s Choir and orchestra include Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms (2017), Britten’s Ceremony of Carols (2017), the Duruflé Requiem (2019), Handel’s Messiah, Parts 1 and 2 (2015) and 3 (2018), Lou Harrison’s Easter Cantata (Midwest premiere, 2017), Haydn’s Te Deum in C and “Lord Nelson” Mass (2016), and Mondonville’s Dominus Regnavit (sung with the Kingsbury Ensemble, 2016). Mr. Sinden led the Choir in Aaron Copland’s unaccompanied masterwork In the Beginning in 2019.

At St. Peter’s, he has commissioned and premiered new choral music by Judith Bingham, Francis Pott, Melissa Dunphy, and Jessica French. Mr. Sinden’s recording with the St. Peter’s Choir, Longing for Home (Regent Records, 2020), has been met with widespread acclaim.

Prior to this appointment, he served for five years as the Organist and Director of Music at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Capitol Square, in Richmond, Virginia. He was also the Artistic Director of the Central Virginia Masterworks Chorale from 2013 to 2015.

Mr. Sinden has appeared as a service organist for two conferences of the Association of Anglican Musicians: Richmond, 2022; and Washington, D.C., 2014. As organist for the American premiere of Herbert Howells’s “By the waters of Babylon,” Mr. Sinden was lauded for playing “that not only brought out the depth of the text, but also created a feeling of ensemble between the assembled forces.” He has also accompanied premieres of music by Gregory Rose and Grayston Ives. His ten-hour performance of John Cage’s Organ²/ASLSP in September 2012 (pictured below) is believed to be the longest performance by a single musician in Richmond, Virginia.

In 2018, Mr. Sinden served as the organist at the Hymn Festival held at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis as part of the Annual Conference of the Hymn Society of the U.S. and Canada. In 2017 he was on the faculty of the Mississippi Conference on Church Music and Liturgy. That same year he was the Adult Housemaster at the St. Louis Royal School of Church Music Summer Course, a role he returned to in 2019.

Mr. Sinden was previously the Assistant Organist and Choirmaster of Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal), Indianapolis, and Organist at St. Thomas Lutheran Church (ELCA), Bloomington, Indiana. While serving as the Assistant Organist and Choirmaster at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Lakewood, Ohio, he helped to establish the St. Peter’s Choristers, a choir for young people affiliated with the RSCM. He has also worked as Organist and Choirmaster (and Tactical Officer) at Lake Delaware Boys’ Camp, an Anglo-Catholic military camp in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

Passionate about Episcopal liturgy and music, Mr. Sinden has served on the Standing Committee on Liturgy and Church Music in the Diocese of Virginia and is a member of the Association of Anglican Musicians. His essay “Tablets and Technology: Liturgy and Music in the Information Age” appears in Ponder Anew: Conversations in 21st Century Church Music from Church Publishing (2022)

An active promoter of the organ and its repertoire, Mr. Sinden has held key positions in several chapters of the American Guild of Organists (AGO). He was recently elected to the Executive Committee of the St. Louis Chapter of the AGO and serves on the New Music Committee for the 2026 AGO National Convention. He has previously served on the Program and Executive Committees of the Richmond Chapter of the AGO and is a former Dean of the Indianapolis Chapter. He is the Secretary/Treasurer of the Organ Media Foundation.

Mr. Sinden holds a master’s degree from Indiana University and a bachelor’s degree from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He undertook post-graduate study in organ improvisation with Jeffrey Smith at Indiana University. While a student at Oberlin, Mr. Sinden was the Organist and Choirmaster for College Vespers. He studied organ with Robert Brewer while attending the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas.

An avid composer of music for the church, Mr. Sinden was commissioned to write a setting of the Sanctus for the 2020 Conference of the Association of Anglican Musicians (postponed to 2022). He was also commissioned to write a Psalm setting for the Virginia Girls’ Choir which received its first performance at Washington National Cathedral in 2015. He is a recipient of the Composer Award from the American Festival for the Arts.

He and his wife, the recorderist Anne Timberlake, are the proud parents of two children, William and Margaret.

September 2023