English Music Festival - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The English Music Festival (also known as EMF) is an annual four day event held over the second May bank holiday, dedicated to the performance of British composers from the mediaeval to the present day with a strong focus on the early to mid twentieth century. Founded and organised by Em Marshall in 2006, the Festival takes place in Dorchester on Thames, Oxfordshire and the surrounding area. Now in its fifth year, the festival is rapidly expanding to become one of Britain’s major classical music festivals, performing many neglected and previously unperformed works by composers as diverse as Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

and Holst

Gustav Holst

Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....

to Joseph Holbrooke

Joseph Holbrooke

Joseph Charles Holbrooke was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was sometimes referred to as "the cockney Wagner".-Family:...

and Edwin York Bowen

York Bowen

Edwin York Bowen was an English composer and pianist. Bowen’s musical career spanned more than fifty years during which time he wrote over 160 works. As well as being a pianist and composer, Bowen was a talented conductor, organist, violist and horn player...

. The festival also presents world premiers by contemporary composers such as Mathew Curtis, Cecilia McDowall

Cecilia McDowall

Cecilia McDowall has been described by the International Record Review as having ‘a communicative gift that is very rare in modern music’ and Gramophone has said of her that ‘she has an instinctive understanding of the medium allied to the ability to speak directly to the listener wholly without...

, Paul Carr

Paul Carr (composer)

Paul Carr is an English classical music composer. Born in Cornwall, he has been writing music since the age of 15. He studied voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and worked in opera stage management before concentrating on composing...

and Tom Rose. EMF's concerts are regularly broadcast by BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

, and the festival has established relationships with such orchestras as the BBC Concert Orchestra

BBC Concert Orchestra

The BBC Concert Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London, one of the British Broadcasting Corporation's five radio orchestras. With around fifty players, it is the only one of the five which is not a full-scale symphony orchestra....

, the Orchestra of St Paul's

Orchestra of St Paul's

The Orchestra of St Paul's is a professional chamber orchestra resident at the famous Actors' Church in Covent Garden. In addition to a concert series in Covent Garden, the Orchestra of St Paul's gives regular performances all around the UK and makes annual visits to the Southbank Centre and St...

and City of London Choir, and artists such as David Owen Norris

David Owen Norris

-Life:Norris was born in 1953. He studied music at Keble College, Oxford where he was organ scholar; he is now an Honorary Fellow of the college. After leaving Oxford, he studied composition, and worked at the Royal Opera House as a repetiteur...

, James Gilchrist

James Gilchrist (tenor)

James Gilchrist is a British tenor specialising in recital and oratoria singing. He began his working life as a doctor, turning to a full-time music career in 1996...

and Janice Watson.

Background and General Information

The EMF held its first festival in October 2006 following a four year fundraising effort and development by Em Marshall. A founder member (and now Chairman of) the Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...

Society (RVW Society), Marshall first conceived of the idea while working at Thames Music Publishing in the late Nineties. The aim of the Festival has been to draw attention to the large amount of neglected, unperformed, and sometimes unpublished works by British composers in the early years of the twentieth Century. Since its inaugural Festival, the EMF has been based in Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester on Thames in Oxfordshire, and concerts are also held in Sutton Courtenay

Sutton Courtenay

Sutton Courtenay is a village and civil parish on the River Thames south of Abingdon and northwest of Didcot. It was part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire.-Today:...

, Radley

Radley

Radley is a village and civil parish about northwest of the centre of Abingdon, Oxfordshire. The parish includes the hamlet of Lower Radley on the River Thames. It was part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire....

, and Oxford. The Festival has an average of fifteen concerts a year, and an additional series of fringe talks. The concerts range from small scale recitals to full scale orchestral pieces, and has recently branched into semi staged opera. Attendance has increased greatly as the Festival has progressed.

Funding for the Festival is based entirely on individual supporters and charitable organisation. The Festival receives no government funding as yet.

Vice presidents of the Festival include Boris Johnson, Jeremy Irons, and the Marquess of Salisbury.

Future Development

EM Records is the recording arm of the English Music Festival and, and was created to fulfil the EMF's aims of celebrating and preserving overlooked works by British composers. EM Records first CD release, produced by Em Marshall, was in March 2011. So far, the recording has been received with enthusiasm by the critics. It features two world premiere recordings together with an unjustly-neglected work. The Violin Sonatas by Arthur Bliss

Arthur Bliss

‎Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...

and Henry Walford Davies have languished in manuscript form for over one hundred years, and were performed at the 2010 English Music Festival by regular EMF artists Rupert Luck and Matthew Rickard. These works are presented alongside the opulent and darkly turbulent Violin Sonata by York Bowen

York Bowen

.

In future the label will produce both recordings of live concerts and specifically recorded work. Plans are already underway for future releases. These include the World Premiere recording of Gustav Holst's The Coming of Christ (which received its first contemporary performance in the 2010 EMF) performed by the City of London Choir under Hilary Davan Wetton

Hilary Davan Wetton

Hilary Davan Wetton is a British conductor.-Biography:He is Musical Director of three major choirs . He is Conductor Emeritus of the Milton Keynes City Orchestra and of the Guildford Choral Society which he conducted from 1968 - 2008...

; and a recording of Roger Quilter's piano music by David Owen Norris.

Also forthcoming is a live recording, to be made at the 2011 Festival, of part-songs by Rawsthorne

Alan Rawsthorne

Alan Rawsthorne was a British composer. He was born in Haslingden, Lancashire, and is buried in Thaxted churchyard in Essex.-Career:...

and Haydn Wood

Haydn Wood

Haydn Wood was a 20th century English composer and a respected violinist.-Life:Haydn Wood was born in the Yorkshire town of Slaithwaite on 25 March 1882...

performed by the Syred Consort under their director, Ben Palmer.

Educating both audiences and children about English music is also part of the EMF mission. The festival has run several education projects, such as joint schools concerts. A current project is still in development.

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Background and General Information

Future Development

External links