Patrice Connelly has degrees from the University of Sydney (music) and Southern Cross University (natural therapies). She began her PhD candidature in Musicology at the University of Queensland in October 2020. She has taught viola da gamba since the late 1980s, and run many workshops across Australia for various early music societies, AUSTA National and others. She has also been guest lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium in the early 2000s. She studied viola da gamba with Ruth Wilkinson and participated in masterclasses in the US and Europe with Hille Perl, Laurence Dreyfus, Mary Springfels and Catharina Meints.
After training in a variety of natural therapies (bodywork, energy healing and naturopathy) from 2002 to 2008 at Nature Care College in Sydney, Health Schools Australia and Southern Cross University), she worked as a naturopath in her own clinic until 2019. She has now retired from this discipline, but published a number of peer-reviewed articles on natural therapies during her clinic years, many of which have multiple citations in the literature.
In December 1994, Patrice began her business Saraband Music, and in 1996 began publishing editions of early music. To date she has published over 320 editions and books, many edited or arranged by Patrice, but also the work of other prominent Australian musicologists to showcase Australian expertise in early music to the world. She has also published the work of some US academics. A number of these editions are urtexts, and are used world-wide. She also owns other imprints such as Hammer & Tongs Reproductions, which features facsimiles of 19th century piano music, and Concertino, which includes a number of her original compositions for string orchestra as well as her arrangements and those of other composers. Prior to founding Saraband Music, a number of her editions of music for viols were published by Dovehouse Editions (Canada), Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain, and PRB Productions (California). In 2022, PRB Productions published two compositions for three viols by Patrice, and the Viola da Gamba Society of America published a third.
Patrice also has formal qualifications in librarianship (1979) and TESOL (2016). She worked as a librarian in a number of special, public and school libraries from 1980 to 1994.