Chris completed his PhD with Durham University on the Canterbury Catch Club, a musical society which met throughout the long nineteenth century in the city, which was published as a book by Cambridge Scholars Publishing entitled "The Canterbury Catch Club: Music in the Frame" in 2019. He has also edited a book of catches and glees from the Canterbury Collection, entitled "As Thomas Was Cudgell'd One Day by his Wife", with an accompanying CD featuring himself and fellow-lay clerks—forming the a capella group 'Cantuar'—singing examples of this rich and varied repertoire. He has given conference papers on this and related subjects throughout the UK and further afield, in Salzburg, Venice, St Petersburg, Xi'an, Hong Kong, Athens and Barcelona. Apart from his academic work, he sustains a lively career as a professional musician, undertaking regular professional work as singer and conductor in the area. Whilst serving as a Tenor Lay Clerk in the Cathedral Choir at Canterbury his work included recordings, BBC radio and TV broadcasts, and international tours, notably to the USA, Holland, Italy and Norway. His specialist interests include the music of the English Reformation; the archives of the Canterbury Catch Club; the music of Canterbury-based composer Alan Ridout; and the songs of such humourists as Flanders and Swann, Noel Coward, Jake Thackeray and Richard Stilgoe.
Chris is regularly in demand as singer and conductor. He and some fellow Lay Clerks from the Cathedral Choir have given several performances of some of the songs of the Canterbury Catch Club both at various venues including local hostelries under authentic conditions and the more refined surroundings of the Cathedral Archives Reading Room. One such concert, in collaboration with the Canterbury Festival, was a major centenary celebration in 2015 of the acquisition of the Catch Club material by the city's library. He is co-Director of the Snowdown Colliery Welfare Male Voice Choir.
