Tim Ravalde

Welcome to the website of Tim Ravalde. Based in Chichester, West Sussex, he is an organist, pianist, choral director and teacher.

Since 2010 he has been the Assistant Organist of Chichester Cathedral where he is responsible for accompanying the Cathedral Choir for the daily services, as well as for all concerts, tours, recordings and broadcasts. He also assists Charles Harrison with the training of the choir.

He is a busy and experienced teacher of organ, piano and music theory. He is the organ tutor at the University of Chichester, piano teacher at the Prebendal School, and also teaches privately.

Since 2011 he has been Musical Director of Fernhurst Choral Society, a large and busy SATB choir which gives regular concerts in West Sussex.

He is a frequent organ recitalist, and has given concerts in numerous places around the UK, as well as in France and Germany. Details of some of his forthcoming engagements can be found on the diary page. He is an experienced piano accompanist and has played with a large number of singers, instrumentalists and ensembles. He also appears on various recordings.

His Te Deum Fantasia and Fugue for organ, written for the 950th anniversary of Chichester Cathedral and first performed there in 2025, is published by Goodmusic and has been warmly reviewed in Choir & Organ and Organists' Review. His Ave maris stella Fugue followed in 2026, also from Goodmusic, which he played at the Southern Cathedrals Festival in a service recorded for BBC Radio 3.

Earlier competition successes include his setting of Siegfried Sassoon's sonnet Dreamers, which won the Association of English Singers and Speakers' Song Competition in 2018; his organ toccata on Tu es Petrus, highly commended in the Royal College of Organists' 2020 composition competition; and his setting for organ of Veni creator, winner of the Beauty in Sound competition in 2023. His hymn tune Gentleness, written specifically for words by Bishop Geoffrey Rowell, is freely available here. More on his compositions can be found here.

He gave the first performance of Terence Allbright's Toccata for Organ in 2018 and recorded it in 2019. He made the first recording of Salve Regina by George Haynes in 2020, and gave the first performance of Haynes's Toccata in 2021. As organ accompanist, he has taken part in first performances of works by Gabriel Jackson, James MacMillan, John McCabe, Joanna Marsh, Philip Moore, and Frederick Stocken.

He was educated at the Nelson Thomlinson School, Wigton, and St John's College, Cambridge, where he studied music. He has held organ scholarships at Carlisle Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral and St John's, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists.

To contact Tim, please see the details below.