The December 2017 concert is dedicated to the memory of

David Parfitt 1933 - 2017 

David Parfitt was a teacher and musician in the Bristol and Bath area for all of his life and the father of Peter Parfitt, Musical Director of the Aberdeen Bach Choir. As a boy he won a scholarship to Bristol Grammar School where he remained until it was time for National Service. This was spent in the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy. He was commissioned to the Royal Naval Air Station at Culdrose in Cornwall as an air traffic controller. After National Service he entered teacher training. His career as a teacher began at a boys' Primary School in Bristol. There followed appointments in several Bristol schools as he progressed up the career ladder culminating with a Headship at Marshfield Primary School, a post he held for nine years. Throughout his time as a teacher he was also the co-ordinator of music education for the Bristol schools. After taking early retirement he trained as an Ofsted school inspector, spending a further ten years on inspection teams.

Throughout his life David's passions were supporting Bristol City Football Club, playing the organ, and the American way of life. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of US politics and its military services and had visited all 50 states. Playing the organ surpassed all his other hobbies however. He began lessons as a boy with the village organist, and soon progressed to lessons with the organist at Bristol Cathedral. The offer to become an Articled Pupil to the organist of Winchester Cathedral had to be turned down for financial reasons. However, David continued lessons with the organist of Bath Abbey. Following his first appointment as a teenager, David went on to complete a total of 67 years of consecutive service to the Church of England as an organist and choirmaster, unbroken but for his two years of National Service. He finally retired from this in March of this year, and, until his final service, conducted regular choral evensongs in the Anglican cathedral tradition with a robed choir of over 40 members. As a man who spent nearly five decades in the field of education, coupled with almost seven decades as a church organist and choir master, David touched, influenced and improved the lives of literally thousands of people, both young and old.