Pat O’Brien was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947. He played and taught guitars, lutes, and historical harps in his native New York City for almost 50 years; he played and sang folkloric and popular music as well as jazz and contemporary classical guitar before coming to early music. He taught Renaissance and Baroque lutes, vihuela, early guitar, theorbo, archlute, cittern and early harp at Sarah Lawrence, Mannes, N.Y.U., Queens College, Stony Brook U., and SUNY Purchase. A longtime director of the Lute Society of America, Pat was also a director of the New York Continuo Collective. He performed and taught at the Boston, Holland, and Vancouver early music festivals; New York City Opera; the Nottingham and Toronto guitar festivals; Basel Historical Harp Festival, Guitar Foundation of America Annual Conference, Musica Antigua (Spain), and Scuola Civica di Musica (Milan). He recorded with the King’s Noyse, the Harp Consort, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, and, with Dennis Cinelli, the 19th-century guitar duets of J. K. Mertz. He also recorded with lutenist Paul O’Dette, with whom he was writing a method for 16th-century lute. Since 2012, he was on the faculty of Julliard.
Above all, Pat was known for his unique skills in teaching and pedagogy. He taught his innumerable students not only the mechanics and technique of playing their instruments, but instilled his own poetic and erudite approach in all of them. He spent many hours with each of his students, patiently tending to their individual needs. There was hardly a lesson with Pat that did not end up with coffee, lunch or dinner, and always filled with fascinating conversation. Pat left an indelible mark on everyone he came in contact with and he is going to live in the music and memories of all his students and friends forever.