Friday 20th October
Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician
STEPHEN TURNBULL
Stephen was born in 1956. Once a half-decent boy soprano, his is now the kind of bass voice best confined to the back row of the chorus. His interest in Sullivan was nurtured by G&S productions at school and university. In 1979 he became Secretary of the then fledgeling Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, a post which he still holds. In this capacity he has brought about the issue of many CDs of Sullivan's music and mounted hundreds of performances, mostly in the context of the Society's weekend residential Sullivan Festivals, which have been running since 1984. He is the author of many CD booklet notes and has written extensively on the history of recordings of Sullivan's music, of which he has one of the world's most extensive collections, ranging from cylinder to CD. To earn a living he divides his time between writing in Cornwall (autumn) and working in Yorkshire as administrator of the international Gilbert and Sullivan Festival (rest of the year).

Saturday 21st October
Gustav Holst: A Man of Our Time
RAYMOND HEAD
Raymond is a composer, teacher and Holst scholar. He lives in Oxfordshire and has spent many years researching and writing papers about the work of Gustav Holst whom he considers to be under-researched and under-appreciated. Much of his work has been published by Tempo (Cambridge University Press), the BBC Music Magazine and elsewhere. He has lectured widely and broadcasts frequently for the BBC. He recently published an urtext edition of Holst's wind quintet. His own compositions in all genres are played in various parts of the world and can be obtained form Sky Dance Press.

Sunday 22nd October
'Under the shadowing wings of Death': English composers and the First World War
PHILIP LANCASTER
Philip is forging a career as a freelance writer, researcher and editor, specialising in early 20th century British music. Philip is currently undertaking a research degree, working closely with the Ivor Gurney Estate in the preparation of a new edition of Gurney’s songs. His compilation of the first catalogue of musical works is to be published later this year. The early results of his work with Gurney’s music have been recorded for CD, and further recordings are about to be undertaken. Notable amongst these is Gurney’s War Elegy for orchestra, to be issued imminently on the Dutton Epoch label. As well as providing regular programme and CD sleeve notes, Philip has published several articles, including a major article on composer, pianist and critic W. Denis Browne, a biography of whom is in progress. As a singer, Philip was a member of Bristol Cathedral Choir for 6½ years and has since given numerous solo performances in recital, oratorio, opera, and on television. Philip is hoping to launch a new publishing house, specialising in British arts, within the next year: ‘The Chosen Press’. (www.chosen-arts.org.uk)

Monday 23rd October
Bridging the Gap: CD Producer Philip Lane discusses the resurgence in recording British orchestral works
PHILIP LANE
PhilipLane was born in Cheltenham and read Music at Birmingham University with John Joubert and Peter Dickinson. As a composer he is virtually self-taught although he received encouragement in his student days from two musical heroes, Richard Rodney Bennett and Bernard Herrmann. After more than twenty years' teaching he went freelance in 1997 to concentrate on composition, arranging, reconstructing of classic film scores and producing CDs. He has reconstructed over a hundred film titles and produced well over a hundred CDs of British orchestral music, much of them from the period this festival is dedicated to celebrating. His most recent work has been in composing the scores for TV animation series like Captain Pugwash, reconstructing scores for the on-going series of Chandos Movie CDs and producing discs for Sony, Naxos, ASV and Dutton.

Tuesday 24th October
Let’s to Billiards: Constant Lambert
STEPHEN LLOYD
Stephen Lloyd, a teacher by profession, has had a life-long passion for music, in particular British music. For fourteen years he was Editor of the Delius Society Journal and has written a number of books on music, the first being a biography of the little-known patron and composer Balfour Gardiner (Cambridge University Press 1984, paperback 2005). Since then he has written a history of the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra under its founder conductor Sir Dan Godfrey (Thames 1995); he compiled and edited the complete writings of Frederick Delius’s amanuensis Eric Fenby for the latter’s 90th birthday (Thames 1996), and his most recent book has been a study of the composer William Walton (Boydell 2001). In addition he has contributed chapters to books on a wide range of composers, from Percy Grainger, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Elgar, to Arthur Bliss and Delius.  He is currently engaged on a full-scale study of Constant Lambert, the subject of his talk today.