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The Festival

Welcome to The Amersham Festival of Music website.  Since 1983, the Amersham Festival of Music has been one of the top annual music events in South Bucks. 

 

The Festival has grown steadily in that time and now runs for 2 or more weeks each spring as well as a winter season of concerts featuring our own Festival Orchestra.  

Our Music

Our aim in starting the Festival was to promote music-making of the highest professional quality in the local area, using some of the very attractive local venues available to us.

 

Works are performed both by our own Festival Orchestra and also by a wide variety of visiting guest performers including both professional musicians and talented amateurs.

 

Previous concerts have included everything from Vivaldi to Verdi and Elgar to Ellington in a wide range of musical styles including:-

 

  • Baroque

  • Jazz

  • Major choral works

  • Chamber concerts

  • Opera

  • Classical

 

The festival includes a substantial educational element offering bursaries in partnership with Bucks Music Trust to support subsidised music lessons and free concert tickets to school groups.

A Letter From Our Patron

I write this with a mixture of sadness coupled with a sense of anticipation. Sadness that Iain Ledingham’s extraordinary tenure as Artistic Director of the Amersham Festival is drawing to a close, and excitement as we welcome his successor, Chris Hopkins, and look to the future of our much-loved Festival. Iain’s involvement for over 40 years has been marked by a selfless determination to make music accessible to as many people as possible. His own stellar career at the Royal Academy of Music reflects his exceptional musicianship, which he generously brought to Buckinghamshire by establishing the South Bucks Choral Society in 1980. He recognised the transformational benefits, joy and camaraderie of communal singing, taking singers with a wide range of ability, nurturing them and improving their skills. The end-product of his remarkable abilities has been choral singing of which the community can be really proud. In 1983 Iain set up the Amersham Festival of Music. Such was his leadership from the outset that the musicians whom he gathered together for the Festival were always keen to return. Amongst these were young musicians to whom he gave a platform from which to develop their careers. And, in demonstrating the value of music to the community, he attracted a significant bequest which now enables the Festival to offer bursaries to children for their musical studies. Over 100 young people have been supported by the Amersham Festival in this way. As he hands over the baton, he takes with him the immense gratitude and appreciation of the Amersham Festival Society for his immense contribution to music making in the community. His legacy will be a lasting one. All of which leads me now to welcome Chris Hopkins as only the second Artistic Director of the Festival in its 40-plus-year history! Chris brings with him a wide range of experience, most notably having conducted many performances for English National Opera as well as working with English Sinfonia and Orchestra of the City. He has ably developed these ensembles and their audiences over the years to positions of growth and stability through imaginative programming that balances classic repertoire with premieres, rediscoveries, commissions and special projects. Having moved to Chesham five years ago, Chris has already discovered what a wealth of musical talent and interest there is in Buckinghamshire, and he is excited by the prospect of developing the next phase of the Festival. We really look forward to what he has in store for us.

COUNTESS HOWE
Patron, Amersham Festival Society

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