About Us
Maidstone Wind Symphony aims to be one of the United Kingdom’s leading concert bands, giving high quality performances characterised by excellence and vitality. Our mission is to present the best quality performances exploring innovative repertoire and collaborating with and nurturing outstanding musical talent. We are known for our friendly and warm nature and engagement both with music and audiences through our performances as well as through workshops and master-classes developing emerging musical talent. We commission new and exciting works demonstrating our commitment to the future development of concert bands and the concert band repertory. We aim to enrich and interact with the lives of existing and new audiences and widen our ‘MWS community’ inside and outside the concert hall.
'I thoroughly enjoyed working with Maidstone Wind Symphony they are exciting and professional from the first note!" Brett Baker, Principal Trombonist, Black Dyke Band
“It was a great pleasure not only to perform alongside the Maidstone Wind Symphony, but also to meet such great people. Their performance of Kopanitsa by Andrew Baker was truly a joy to be part of.” Gavin Pritchard, Percussionist, Grimethorpe Colliery Band
Maidstone Wind Symphony (formerly Maidstone Winds) was founded by Brendon Le Page in 1998. The band originally and primarily consisted of former members of Maidstone Youth Music Society and Kent Youth Wind Orchestra. Membership of the band now includes professionals, teachers, students and gifted amateurs.
Jonathan Crowhurst was appointed as the band’s third Musical Director in 2010 following Brendon Le Page and Jeremy Cooper. Richard Hubbert was made Composer in Association - the first to be appointed to that position in Maidstone Winds’ history. The band changed its name to Maidstone Wind Symphony and made its first appearance at the Exchange Studio in June 2010.
In September 2010 a unique partnership was formed between Maidstone Wind Symphony and Maidstone Youth Music Society to build upon the success of the organisations’ musical traditions and cultural links. The two organisations performed together for the first time in March 2011. This partnership forms a strategy for long-term support.
MWS have since invited John Holland, winner of the Making Music Award at the British Composer Awards 2008, to become a Composer in Association partnering Richard Hubbert demonstrating the bands commitment to new works for concert band. Since 2010 MWS has performed premieres of music by Peter Graham, Rodney Newton, Philip Sparke, Ray Farr, Andrew Baker, Eric Geldard, Jeff Tyzik and Paul Lovatt Cooper as well as commissioning works by local composers, including Simon Proctor and Elizabeth Freeborn.
MWS has also had the privilege of working with some of the country’s leading musicians, including Kevin Ashman, principal cornet of the International Staff Band, Brett Baker the principal trombonist of the world famous Black Dyke Band and Gavin Pritchard, virtuoso percussionist.
The band in recent times have collaborated with the Band of the Corps of Royal Engineers and in the near future will perform for the first time with Eynsford Concert Band, Byneset Musikkorps from Trondheim, Norway and Philharmonie Gelre, Holland.
It is first and foremost the music that draws these young enthusiasts together. One of the aims of the band is to further the recognition of the symphonic band movement in the United Kingdom. Through the presentation of original music and the best available arrangements of symphonic works, the band looks to raise public awareness of the medium.
Music Director Jonathan Crowhurst
Jonathan Crowhurst has a growing reputation as a performer, teacher and conductor.
Having completed the first part of his music education at Maidstone Youth Music Society where he held the position of principal oboe in Maidstone Youth Orchestra and Maidstone Youth Wind Orchestra, Jonathan then joined the Kent Centre for Young Instrumentalists (KMA), now Kent Academy of Music, in 2003. There he studied oboe under Sue Purton and piano with Karen Wildy. He was also a member of the Kent Youth Choirs for four years touring Austria and Holland and played in the Kent Youth Chamber Orchestra.
Jonathan continued his studies and graduated with a BMus (hons) degree from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2008. He conducted the chamber choir, was principal oboe of the college Sinfonia performing in the UK Premiere of Sergei Prokofiev’s Songs of Our Days as well as contemporary works by Schnittke, Saariaho and Ives. Jonathan has been a member of the London Philharmonic Choir, BBC Symphony Chorus and Londinium Voices performing in a number of acclaimed performances.
Jonathan performed as part of the college opera company, OperaGold, in productions of Peter Grimes (Hobson), Marriage of Figaro (Antonio), Carmen (Morales) and Magic Flute (Second Armed Man). He has since gone on to play roles in Venus and Adonis (Shepherd and Huntsman), Dido and Aeneas (Sailor), and Tosca (Spoletta), as well as chorus in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer.
Taking up the baton, Jonathan has conducted the Puregold Ensemble, whom he founded in 2009, the Kent Youth Chamber Orchestra and Maidstone Wind Symphony. His current tenure as Music Director of Maidstone Wind Symphony has been marked with a series of well-received concerts including collaborations with the Band of the Corps of Royal Engineers, Maidstone Youth Wind Orchestra, virtuoso percussionist Gavin Pritchard and Principal Cornet of the International Staff Band, Kevin Ashman. Future collaborations include a recording with acclaimed trombonist Brett Baker and concerts with Eynsford Concert Band, Byneset Musikkorps, Maidstone Choral Union and Philharmonie Gelre.
He serves as a teacher of music at Invicta Grammar School for Girls after teaching at Maidstone Grammar School and vocal studies with Kent Music and Medway Schools Music Association.
With his roots in the British choral tradition, Jonathan currently sings for the Holst Singers under Stephen Layton recording and until recently sang professionally for the Philharmonia Chorus as a member of their Young Professional Singers Scheme.
Composer in Association Richard Hubbert
Richard received his early musical education in Boston, Lincolnshire England. He then joined the Band of the Corps of Royal Engineers as a clarinet player and eventually their staff composer/arranger. While serving in the Royal Engineers Band, Richard travelled extensively and was often asked to arrange and compose music for special occasions including: The Australian Bicentennial Tattoo (1988), The Edinburgh Military Tattoo and The Kangwon InternationalTattoo (2000). In addition he has composed and arranged music for various types of ensembles, in a range of genres, some of this being performed on television, radio and recorded to CD. In 2001 Richard retired from the Royal Engineers band and has started a new career in music education, while also maintaining his interests in composing, conducting and performing.
www.richardhubbertmusic.com
www.myspace.com/richardhubbertmusic
Composer in Association John Holland
I was born in Hastings in 1977, but was raised in Watford. I moved to south London in 2004 with my life partner, Chris, and we're now happily settled down in Forest Hill in our own little place just around the corner from the world-famous Horniman Museum.
My chamber orchestra piece 'Green Sky' won the Making Music Award at the British Composer Awards 2008. In April 2009, the world premiere of my ‘Requiem (Opus 15)’ took place at All Saints Church, West Dulwich and January 2010 saw the first performance of ‘The Something In-Between’, an Oboe/Cor Anglais mini-concerto, written for and performed by Isobel Williams. The London Saxophone Choir have presented several new pieces of mine over the last few years, including ‘Mission: Improbable’ (2008) and, most recently, ‘Fanfaricus’ (2010). Several of my pieces for chamber orchestra have been performed and recorded by the London Contemporary Chamber Orchestra, notably ‘Hustle Bustle’ (2006) and ‘Elegy for my father’ (2007).
I am the conductor of Lambeth Wind Orchestra and the London Consorts of Winds Clarinet Choir, often invited to conduct freelance for special events. I am a member of BASCA, PRS and BASBWE, serving on the Executive Committee.
