Roger was born in London in 1955 and raised in Yorkshire. He trained from the age of thirteen at the Royal College of Music, and took his first degree in Music at Leeds University, where he studied composition with Alexander Goehr and Philip Wilby.
After making his debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1975 he freelanced as a pianist, conductor and composer, working with the newly established English National Opera North as a repetitur and conducting promotional conerts. He has accompanied and worked with a great variety of artists, including Donald Swann, Raphael Wallfisch, Eugene Rousseau and William Waterhouse.
He taught piano in the Music Department at Leeds University and at the Yorkshire College of Music, conducted Leeds Youth Opera and Leeds Guild of Singers, and was college accompanist at Leeds College of Music.
He was for six years Senior Lecturer and Director of Music at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, working with many of the world's leading choreographers and dancers. He conducted his own music as part of the inauguration of the Symphony Hall complex at Birmingham, in the presence of HM The Queen.
He enjoys busking on the accordion, and played that extraordinary instrument on the first edition of The Big Breakfast Show.
After studying for the Anglican priesthood at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, and taking a further degree in Theology, he was ordained in 1996.
Roger writes for a number of journals, including a regular column for PS Magazine, the journal of the Probate Section of the Law Society. His academic writings include papers on Sibelian Tonality, Theological Inculturation, and the Sociolinguistics of Contemporary Liturgy; his presentation of a sermon in Rap for Advent Sunday 2003 was broadcast on BBC television's Look North to great, if mixed, critical acclaim.
His leisure interests include Family History, especially tracing the roots of his ancestors in Canada, where they settled in the 1830's.
He was elected a member of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society in 1997.
In September 2004, Roger became Chaplain at Strathallan School in Scotland.
He continues to write and to broadcast, and his occasional series of Talking Saints can be heard on BBC Radio 2 on Good Morning Sunday with Aled Jones.
The text of some of the Talking Saints can be found by following the links to Index/Stories at Bible4Today.
In October 2008, a number of his poems were included in the otherwise excellent anthology edited by Barry Tebb, Strangers on the Shore.
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email: f a t h er @ p r i e s t . c o m