Roger Quick

Roger Quick is an Anglican priest who has been chaplain to the homeless in Leeds since 2013.

He grew up in Yorkshire and London, where he was a Junior Exhibitioner at the Royal College of Music. He took his first degree in Music at Leeds University under Alexander Goehr.

Working as an accompanist, he played at the Wigmore Hall in 1975, and worked with the newly established Opera North. He accompanied a great variety of artists, including Donald Swann, Eugene Rousseau, William Waterhouse and Ted Darling.

He was Director of Music and Senior Lecturer at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, working with many of the world's leading choreographers and dancers, broadcasting frequently. Whilst there he conducted his own music as part of the inauguration of the Symphony Hall complex at Birmingham. He played accordion on the very first edition of The Big Breakfast Show.

As music director, actor and deviser, Roger worked with Jabbok Theatre, and at the Traverse Theatre and the Young Vic. He wrote and presented an occasional series, Talking Saints, on BBC Radio 2 for Aled Jones’ Good Morning Sunday. His presentation of a sermon in Rap for Advent Sunday 2003 was broadcast on BBC television to great, if mixed, critical acclaim.

He has written for a variety of journals, contributing a regular column to the Probate Section journal of the Law Society. A number of his poems were included in the anthology edited by Barry Tebb, Strangers on the Shore (Sixties Press, 2008)

After training for the Anglican priesthood at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, and taking a further degree in Theology, he was ordained in 1996.

His short mass setting is recorded on the cd Maranatha! recorded at Mirfield.

After curacies in Leeds, Roger was for seven years Chaplain & Head of Divinity at Strathallan School in Perthshire, and was afterwards Rector of Highland Perthshire, where he was chaplain to the Celtic Bishops’ Conference, and honorary padré to the Cameronians Regimental Association.

His leisure interests have included studying computer science at Kellogg College, Oxford, riding, and glass engraving; he has been a member of the Society of Genealogists and the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, and of the Royal Entomological Society.

In 2013 he returned to Leeds as chaplain to St George’s Crypt, from which he retired in 2022.

His two children are the artist blacksmith Ben Quick, and Olivia Quick, who worked with him as Development Officer at St George’s Crypt.