Patterson, Frank (1938–2000), singer, was born 5 October 1938 in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, eldest of three sons and one daughter of Sheamus Patterson, maintenance foreman in Kickham army barracks in the town, and Mary ‘May’ Patterson (née Slater). Educated locally at Saints Peter and Paul primary school and the High School, he left school after sitting the intermediate certificate to work in his maternal family's printing business. As a boy soprano and adolescent tenor, he sang locally in religious services, school concerts, and choral society productions; his performances in opera and operetta were praised by the Clonmel-based broadcaster and opera enthusiast Tommy O'Brien (qv). Moving to Dublin, in 1962 he began formal vocal training under Hans Waldemar Rosen (qv), while also working a night job at Irish Printers, and taking an acting course. At the 1964 feis ceoil he won all the major vocal awards; this stunning success led to engagements for classical recitals and roles in opera and oratorio throughout Ireland, and to scholarships for further studies in London and Holland. His first professional performance was in Handel's opera ‘Acis and Galatea’ at the 1964 Wexford festival. Touring America in 1966 with Feis Éireann, a troupe of Irish singers and dancers, he met Eily O'Grady, the troupe's musical director and pianist, and member of a prominent Dublin musical family; they married later in the year. For the remainder of Patterson's career, she was a frequent accompanist at his concerts and recitals. They had one son.
Patterson continued vocal studies in Paris (1968–72) with the French soprano Janine Micheau, while giving frequent stage, radio, and television performances. Signed to a recording contract by the Philips label, he recorded an album of songs by Henry Purcell, another of Elizabethan lute songs, an album of songs by Hector Berlioz with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis (1969), and a selection of Beethoven's arrangements of Irish folk song with the Music Group of London, released to mark the composer's bicentenary (1970). He also recorded Handel, Mozart, Schubert, and Wolf. Developing an international reputation as an interpreter of oratorio, classical art song, and vocal orchestral music, he was engaged for live concerts and for radio and television broadcasts throughout Europe, appearing as soloist with leading orchestras and conductors, and at various music festivals. At the Aix-en-Provence festival he sang Beethoven's ‘Missa solemnis’ under the baton of Karl Richter.
In Ireland, where he was a frequent performer in oratorio, Patterson was especially noted as the Evangelist in the Bach passions, and for his many performances in Handel's ‘Messiah’. He was a regular soloist in the celebrated annual series of Bach cantata concerts, beginning in 1972, in St Ann's church, Dawson St., Dublin, directed by John Beckett (1927–2007); he was part of Beckett's Bach ensemble that recorded for the BBC, and performed in 1979 at the Promenade Concerts in London's Royal Albert Hall and at the Flanders Early Music Festival, Bruges. Other collaborations with Beckett (as keyboard accompanist) included songs by Purcell and Haydn.
Established among the leading Irish tenors of his generation, from the mid 1970s Patterson gradually altered the direction of his career, largely abandoning his concentration on the classical repertoire by crossing over into light popular entertainment. Recording prolifically (throughout his career he made some forty LPs in six languages), he released commercially successful albums in various genres: Irish and Irish-American sentimental songs and ballads; songs from stage musicals, films, and the international popular repertoire; religious and ‘inspirational’ songs; Christmas songs; and popular light classical vocal selections. Finding an especially large and lucrative market for such material in America, he moved permanently to the USA in 1987 (having resided from the early 1970s in Brittas, Co. Dublin). Thereafter his repertoire included American patriotic material. His recordings won several platinum, silver, and gold discs; two of his American releases were million-dollar sellers. The first Irish artist to have his own show in New York's Radio City Music Hall, he sold out the 6,000-seat venue in six consecutive years. He performed sold-out concerts in other major North American venues, including Carnegie Hall, NY; the Kennedy Center, Washington, DC; Symphony Hall, Boston; and Roy Thompson Hall, Toronto. He appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra (USA) in an outdoor concert before an audience of 60,000 on the steps of the Capitol in Washington. He performed twice at the White House, for presidents Reagan (1982) and Clinton (1995). During the 1990s he made three highly popular television specials in the USA for the Public Broadcasting Service.
Retaining wide popularity in Ireland, where he lived and performed for part of every year, Patterson hosted a long-running light music series on RTÉ television, For your pleasure (1973–84). He sang at the papal mass in Dublin's Phoenix Park (1979) before an outdoor congregation of 1.3 million, which he rated as the highlight of his career; he also sang Schubert's ‘Ave Maria’ before the Pope in St Patrick's cathedral, NY (1996). The proceeds of his benefit concert in the early 1970s were the first funds raised publicly for the Glencree Reconciliation Centre, Co. Wicklow, of whose work he remained a generous supporter. He sang five tracks on Faith of our fathers, the album of catholic religious anthems and hymns that was an Irish chart hit of the 1990s.
Patterson was cast as the tenor Bartell D'Arcy in The dead (1987), the film by John Huston (qv) based on the story by James Joyce (qv). While his rendition of the air ‘The lass of Aughrim’ was achingly poignant, his acting was the film's weakest element; unable to transcend his amiable public persona, he failed entirely to capture the haughty irascibility of the character in Joyce's text. He acted and sang in an episode of the Tracey Ullman Show that was nominated for an Emmy television award (1988), and appeared briefly in Neil Jordan's film Michael Collins (1996). His voice is heard in a memorably violent scene in the Coen brothers’ gangster film Miller's Crossing (1990), singing ‘Danny boy’ from a gramophone. He is credited posthumously on the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002).
Patterson's singing was noteworthy for his light, sweet voice, and identifiably Irish diction. A devout catholic, he was a Knight of Malta and a Knight Commander of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, and was made a Knight of St Gregory by Pope John Paul II (1984). He received honorary doctorates, in music from Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island (1990), and in fine arts from Manhattan College, NY (1996), and was awarded the Norman Vincent Peale Award for Positive Thinking in the Arts by the Blanton-Peale Institute (2000). He and his wife were awarded the gold medal of the Éire Society of Boston (1998). A keen sportsman in his youth in Clonmel, where he competed in hurling, cricket, and tennis, he played the latter sport lifelong, and boasted a single-figure handicap in golf. Suffering in his last year with a brain tumour, he died 10 June 2000 in Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, NY. After requiem masses in both St Patrick's cathedral, NY, and St Mary's pro-cathedral, Dublin, he was buried in St Patrick's cemetery, Clonmel. A bronze statue has been erected in Clonmel in Mick Delahunty Square. His son, Éanán Patterson (b. 1977), has pursued a career as a concert violinist (he recorded and performed with his father), sound designer, audio-post engineer, and composer and producer of music for television and film, and for recording artists, in Ireland and the USA.