In 1988 he left London for St. Louis to chair the Classics Department at John Burroughs School. A decade later he was awarded the first Johnston Endowed Chair in Classics. In addition to his teaching, he also served as Burroughs's curriculum coordinator. Though he has since yielded the Chair and the coordinator positions, he remains the director of the school's annual programs in Italy and Greece and continues to teach Greek and Latin at the school.

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Soon after his arrival in St. Louis, he was appointed assistant choirmaster at Christ Church Cathedral, and also sang in the choir at Temple Shaare Emeth. Since then he has also sung with the choirs of St. Peter's in Ladue and several other churches, and for three years served as choirmaster of Holy Communion Church in University City. Since 2016 he has served as Director of Music at Third Baptist Church, located in St. Louis’s Grand Center.

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In 1989 Philip Barnes was invited to direct the St. Louis Chamber Chorus, becoming only the fourth artistic director since its foundation in 1956. His tenure with the Chamber Chorus has been marked by continual growth, both artistically and in terms of organization. The group has established itself as the leading chamber choir of the region, and it has received numerous plaudits from the press and media. Philip Barnes has created a distinctive sound for the choir that is both rich and arresting. The Chorus has embraced the literature written for unaccompanied choir, and it has ensured that St. Louis audiences may enjoy in live performance masterpieces of the repertoire, from the Renaissance to the Romantic period, and thence to the present day. Philip has led the choir in the performance of more than 1400 works, some of which individually contain many movements; see the repertoire section of this web site for listings of all of these works. No other choir in the Midwest, and few anywhere beyond our region, can boast such a broad repertoire of music from many periods and lands, performed in the original language and to the highest musical standards.

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In addition to his remarkable knowledge of the existing choral repertoire, Philip Barnes has forged a reputation for championing new additions to the literature. In addition to his numerous first American performances, he has also presented many world premières, many of which were written for him and the Chamber Chorus. He has worked closely with many prominent choral composers around the world, including Ronald Arnatt, Richard Rodney Bennett, Melissa Dunphy, Sydney Guillaume, Howard Helvey, Stephen Paulus, Ned Rorem, and Steven Stucky in the United States; David Bednall, Judith Bingham, Kerensa Briggs, Bob Chilcott, Jonathan Dove, Gabriel Jackson, Sasha Johnson Manning, David Matthews, Jonathan Pitkin, Francis Pott, Robert Walker, Magnus Williamson and Patrick Zuk in Great Britain; Clare Maclean in Australia; Eriks Esenvalds and Ugis Praulins in Latvia; Carl Rütti in Switzerland; Mårten Jansson in Sweden; Yakov Gubanov in Italy. Collaborations with the acclaimed musicologist Dr. Craig Monson have also seen the first performance in modern times of motets by Gabriele Fattorini and John Sheppard. For several composers, notably Kerensa Briggs, Melissa Dunphy, Ned Rorem, and Sasha Johnson Manning, Philip has provided either a translation from Greek or an original verse in English.

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Under his direction the Chorus has made sixteen compact discs. Six of them were produced locally, one in collaboration with a Chicago-based publisher, and one with the Swiss-based label, Guild. Most recently, he has recorded eight times for Regent Records in Great Britain, first releasing a disc of works commissioned for the Chorus, and then an anthology of compositions by Granville Bantock, released in late 2009. In 2011 Regent issued Christmas in Saint Louis, a program Mr. Barnes directed of traditional American carols contrasting with recent commissions written specially for the Chamber Chorus. Two years later, a new anthology of American masterworks became available from Regent, and this was followed by Saint Louis Firsts, Saint Louis Classics and Saint Louis Premieres. The latest album, released in the summer of 2024, was Saint Louis Reflections (See our Recordings page.)

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Philip Barnes has also worked with a touring vocal ensemble, Musica Missouri, which he co-founded to present the works of choral composers with Missouri associations. This group's first tour was to Italy in 1998, where he directed concerts to packed audiences in Rome and the Naples area. Another European tour was arranged in the summer of 2004, which saw Philip conducting concerts in major cities in Portugal and Extremadura (Spain). Later, the ensemble returned to the Iberian Peninsula for more programs in Portugal, and then across the Spanish border, Galicia. In 2012, Musica Missouri toured East Anglia (Great Britain), collaborating with local choirs and appearing in several concert series, including the Wymondham Festival.

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Philip Barnes has lectured widely, and he has directed choral workshops in Missouri and beyond. In January 2019 he flew to Moscow to address the Orthodox Patriarch’s Christmas Readings conference. He maintains a dual career of musician and classicist, and he has given numerous papers on the application of music in modern productions of ancient Greek drama, and also analyses of modern settings of Roman verse. For many summers he has taught at New York State's Chautauqua Institution, leading classes on both music and classical languages. Since 2006 he has reviewed recordings for the The Choral Journal, the monthly magazine of the American Choral Directors Association, and articles by him have been published in the British magazine, Choir & Organ.​

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Like Dr. Arnatt, the Chorus's founder, Philip Barnes has been recognized with an award from the American Guild of Organists for his outstanding contribution to choral music in St. Louis. In her year-end summary of 2006, Sarah Bryan Miller of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dubbed Philip Barnes "Conductor of the Year" in recognition of his achievements with the Chamber Chorus. He has continued to garner similar recognition in ensuing years. In 2019 he received an honorary doctorate by the Aquinas Institute at St. Louis University for his contributions to the artistic life of St. Louis. In 2022, he was awarded a Bogliasco Fellowship, which provided the opportunity to complete his translation of all the choruses (‘odes’) in the Antigone by Sophocles. These have been made specifically for composers to set to music for the Chamber Chorus.

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In his fourth decade with the choir, Philip Barnes this season conducts new works by Kerensa Briggs, Carter Datz, and Melissa Dunphy, and he gives the American première of a trilogy by Alexander L’Estrange. Philip continues to present papers at various classical meetings, teach in St. Louis, and give lectures at Chautauqua. and so far, versions have been made by Kerensa Briggs, Sasha Johnson Manning, and Ned Rorem.