About

David Sinden is an organist and conductor noted for his “centered leadership and solid musicianship.” For over a decade, he has served as the Organist and Director of Music at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, St. Louis, Missouri. He is also a Teacher of Applied Music in organ at Washington University in St. Louis.

At St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, he plays the church’s 56-rank Mander organ and directs the St. Peter’s Choir and a chorister program affiliated with the Royal School of Church Music. He also directs the church’s professional choir, the St. Peter’s Singers, which sings monthly services of Choral Evensong. He has facilitated the commissions and premieres of new choral music by Judith Bingham, Francis Pott, Melissa Dunphy, Sasha Johnson Manning, 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.

Concert performances with the St. Peter’s Choir and orchestra include Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, the Requiem by Maurice Duruflé, G. F. Handel’s Messiah, Lou Harrison’s Easter Cantata (Midwest premiere), Joseph Haydn’s “Lord Nelson” Mass and Te Deum in C, and Jean-Joseph de Mondonville’s Dominus Regnavit (with the Kingsbury Ensemble). Mr. Sinden has also led the Choir in Aaron Copland’s unaccompanied masterwork In the Beginning.

Before coming to St. Louis, Mr. Sinden 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.

Increasingly in demand as an organ accompanist, Mr. Sinden frequently performs with the Bach Society of St. Louis, Early Music Missouri, and the St. Louis Chamber Chorus. He has also appeared as an organist at the national conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Association of Anglican Musicians, the Hymn Society of the U.S. and Canada, and the Organ Historical Society. 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.

Mr. Sinden has served as the Adult Housemaster for three Royal School of Church Music summer choral residencies: St. Louis in 2018 and 2019, and Carolina in 2025. In 2017, he was on the faculty of the Mississippi Conference on Church Music and Liturgy.

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). In 2026, he delivered the annual Jones Lecture at the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee: “The Experimental Hymnody of Herbert Howells.”

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 is the Sub-Dean of the St. Louis Chapter of the AGO and has previously served on the chapter's Executive Committee. For the 2026 AGO National Convention in St. Louis, he served on the New Music and Program Committees. In the Richmond Chapter of the AGO, he served on the Program and Executive Committees. Mr. Sinden is a past 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, who reads omnivorously, and Margaret, who reads mostly graphic novels about cats.

July 2026