NMSM Officers

Dr William M. Thomas

Senior Executive Officer

Dr William M. Thomas was trained at the Northern School of Music, Manchester. He studied Piano, Singing and Trumpet as a boy and returned as a young man for singing lessons. For two years he was also in the Manchester Cathedral Cantata Choir.

He has held four posts as Organist and Choirmaster over 50 years. He has broadcast in this country and abroad and cut a LP while at All Saints Bury All Male Choir. Now retired, Bill is Assistant Organist at St Annes Parish Church.

Dr Colin Porter

Chairman

Dr Colin Porter has been organist of Mossley Hill Parish Church since 1985. He isa recitalist and for nearly 20 years was Director of the Liverpool Festival Choir.

He is a Senior Fellow of the NMSM. He is an Hon.Fellow of the Guild of Musicians & Singers and an Associate Fellow of the National College of Music & Arts, London.

He was made a Doctor of Sacred Music {Hon.DSM} and a Senior Fellow of the Faculty of Liturgical Musicians by the JHPC University.

Dr Paul Melville

General Secretary, Clarion Editor & Data Protection Officer

Paul has been a member of the NMSM since it began, transferring his membership from the former Lancashire School of Music. He became Secretary following his retirement from teaching.

Mark Rawsthorn

Bursar

Mark Rawsthorn has been the Organist at Ormskirk Parish Church since January 2012, succeeding Michael Kelsall. Prior to this, he had served for 11 years as Organist & Choirmaster at the Priory Church of St Thomas-the-Martyr, UpHolland.

Previous appointments include St Agnes, Ullet Road, Liverpool and St Mary’s, Walton-on-the-Hill, Liverpool, both of which were renowned for their superb choral traditions, as well as St John’s, Ainsdale, where he was responsible for the remodelling of the small Willis II organ, and St James’s, West Derby, where he presided over the glorious 1869 Wm. Hill Organ, which remained in almost original condition.

Mark took up the post of Bursar for the NMSM in June 2023.

Chris Pilsbury

Academic Registrar

Chris was educated at Chester Cathedral Choir School and The Royal Northern College of Music. He studied organ with Eric Chadwick and Roger Fisher and has held several organists’ posts in and around Chester.

Before returning to Chester he was Organist, Choirmaster and Director of Music at Pennthorpe School in West Sussex. During his time there the Chapel Choir sang at most cathedrals and choral establishments in the south including Canterbury, Ely, Winchester, Oxford, Salisbury, Portsmouth and Chichester Cathedrals and on several occasions, sang the weekend services at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle and Truro Cathedral. He was a member of the music department at The Queen’s School, Chester and for over twenty five years an ‘A’ Level music examiner for EDEXEL.

For over a decade he assisted with the training of the Girls’ Choir at Chester Cathedral. Chris has been organist at Wrexham Parish Church, North Wales since St. David’s Day 2014. We hope many of you will get to know Chris and we welcome him as a member of the Management Committee.

Dr Michael Pretty

Archivist

Michael was born in Fakenham, Norfolk and moved to Attleborough, also in Norfolk at the age of 5.

He joined Attleborough church choir alongside his father at 7. His first school was St. Priscas, run by French nuns, and he then went to middle, secondary, Norwich city college and CCAT. After service in the RAF he joined a firm of solicitors in Norwich, and later joined a firm opposite the Law Courts in London, where he became a legal executive, having passed the ILEx exams.

In 1967 he spent 2 years as organist at Oban Episcopal Cathedral, and joined Rothmans in London when he came south, and was organist at Holy Trinity, Stroud Green. He had a keen interest in organs and how they worked, as a teenager, and it became a hobby from 1976 when he went to study in Leeds, and helped a friend dismantle several instruments, and repaired and tuned others. In the early 1980s he was awarded the contract to rebuild and enlarge the organ in Wimborne Methodist Church, which was recorded by Priory Records.

Michael retired from full time work in 2007, and has been organist at St. Mary’s Parish Church, Hemsby since 2003.