News
News
March 2024: Neil Ferris appointed as new Conductor of the Leith Hill Music Festival
Our wonderful Conductor for the past eight years, Jonathan Willcocks will be passing on the baton after our April 2024 annual Festival. Our next Leith Hill Music Festival Conductor, in a line of distinguished musicians stretching back to Ralph Vaughan Williams at the founding of the Festival in 1905, is Neil Ferris.
Currently Chorus Director BBC Symphony Chorus, Co-Artistic Director and Conductor Sonoro, also recent Wimbledon Choral Society music director, Neil combines the experience necessary to lead LHMF with ideas and vision – drawn from that experience – to take us into a new era.
Jonathan, awarded the British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours list, says, “I am so thrilled that Neil Ferris is to be my successor as Festival Conductor of the Leith Hill Music Festival. Neil has everything that one could hope for in this appointment – strong experience of bringing the very best out of large amateur choruses, extensive work with professional orchestras and soloists and the charisma to inspire everyone to achieve more than they thought possible. The next stage of the evolution of our great historically important Festival is in the safest of hands.”
Neil says, “I am passionate about the wonderful and varied choral scene that we are so fortunate to have in the UK. To be offered the chance to be the conductor of the Leith Hill Music Festival and its celebration of community singing is an opportunity that I will grasp with both hands and with great excitement. Some of my formative musical experiences as a teenager revolved around the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the responsibility of being a custodian of his music festival I shall relish and carry out with love and care. I am so fortunate to inherit a festival in rude health and I give heartfelt thanks to Jonathan Willcocks for his inspiration and dedication that has set me a great example to follow.”
For more information or to arrange interviews with Neil Ferris or Jonathan Willcocks, please contact Anaïs Pédron at publicity@lhmf.org.uk.