Mayfield Music in 2023

Happy New Year

The Mayfield Festival is on even numbered years, so the next Festival is April/May 2024.

However, we have early news of events for this year:

Wednesday 25 Jan      Helen Charlston, mezzo soprano – Mayfield School Concert Hall

Friday 17 Feb                Sofiia Matviienko flautist 2022 winner – St John’s Waterloo

Saturday 25 Feb           Organ Recital (Jack Gonzalez-Harding) – St Dunstan’s

Saturday 18 Mar           Edvard Pogossian’s soirée – Manor Grange in Tunbridge Wells

Saturday 25 Mar          Jack Gonzalez-Harding & Fenella Humphreys concert – St Dunstan’s

Sunday 30 Apr              Mayfield Festival Choir – Haydn’s Creation – St Dunstan’s

Thu-Sun 22-25Jun      Mayfield Festival concerts weekend – St Dunstan’s

Saturday 23 Sep           Concert Jack Gonzalez-Harding concert (tbc) – St Dunstan’s

Saturday 7 Oct              Silent Movie + organ – St Dunstan’s

Sunday 19 Nov             Mayfield Festival Choir – St Dunstan’s

The Music Makers of Mayfield are not resting, even on a non-Festival year. Get these dates into your diaries and more details will follow as the events are refined and draw closer.

Details for the first quarter events:

On Wednesday 25th January 2023,

Helen Charlston, mezzo soprano

Sholto Kynoch, piano

Mayfield School Concert Hall

Mayfield School welcomes mezzo soprano Helen Charlston to give a lunchtime recital. Hailed as “a rather special mezzo” (Music Web International), Helen is increasingly in demand in the UK and abroad. She won first prize in the 2018 London Handel Singing Competition and was a finalist in the 2019 Grange Festival International Singing Competition, won the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize in the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and is a BBC New Generation Artist. Helen was a founder participant of the Rising Star of the Enlightenment programme, working alongside the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; a member of Les Arts Florissants Young Artist Programme (Jardin des Voix) for 2021/22; and is a 2018 City Music Foundation Artist.

Helen Charleston is a regular performer of opera around the world and is regularly heard on the concert platform with some of the UK’s most prominent collaborative pianists. In recent years she has performed at Oxford Lieder Festival, Leeds Lieder and the Ryedale Festival, as well as giving recitals at Wigmore Hall and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Helen’s growing discography includes two solo albums and others with Fretwork and the Academy of Ancient Music.

Sholto Kynoch is a sought-after pianist who specialises in song and chamber music. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the Oxford Lieder Festival, which won a prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2015, cited for its ‘breadth, depth and audacity’ of programming. Recent recitals have taken him to Wigmore Hall, Heidelberger Frühling in Germany, the Zeist International Lied Festival in Holland, the LIFE Victoria festival and Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Opéra de Lille, Kings Place in London, Piano Salon Christophori in Berlin and many other leading venues nationally and internationally. He has performed with singers including Benjamin Appl, Sophie Daneman, Robert Holl, James Gilchrist, Christoph Prégardien, Joan Rodgers, Kate Royal and Birgid Steinberger, amongst many others. Together with violinist Jonathan Stone and cellist Christian Elliott, Sholto is also the pianist of the Phoenix Piano Trio, praised for a ‘musical narrative of tremendous, involving depth’. In July 2018, Sholto was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in the RAM Honours.

Time: 13.45 – 14.45

Location: Mayfield School Concert Hall

Ticket price: £10 (Full time students free)

Tickets as usual will be available at:

Online – https://www.TicketSource.co.uk/mayfieldfestival

Phone – 0333 666 3366 quoting ‘Mayfield Festival’

High Street – Sew Inspired

On Friday 17th February 2023,

Sofiia Matviienko

TW 2022 Competition flautist winner

St John’s Waterloo

Sofiia was the Wind winner of the Tunbridge Wells International Music Competition in 2022.

She will be performing for us from 7-8pm, with donations collected in aid of Ukraine.

Sofiia will play a highly engaging programme of music for the flute, including old favourites and surprising new pieces, including pieces by Bach, Tchaikovsky, Schubert and Karg-Elert. Born in Ukraine, Sofiia has been studying wind instruments since the age of five, often on her own and from YouTube videos. She has won many competitions and taken part in international festivals. In 2017, she won a scholarship to the Purcell school, and is now studying at the Royal Academy of Music, again with a scholarship.

Tickets can be bought via links on the TWIMC website events page (twimc.org.uk/events/) or St John’s Waterloo events page, as above. The direct Eventbrite link is here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/twimc-sofiia-matviienko-tickets-514088070257

Tickets for this London concert £10

(£5 Competition Friends; Free for Patrons, students and under 25s).

You have the opportunity to join a post-concert meal with the performers on the Southbank if you are interested. Please contact Mary Anderson at chair@twimc.org if you would like to find out more.

On Saturday 25 February 2023

St Dunstan’s Organ Trust presents an Organ Recital given by Jack Gonzalez-Harding (St Dunstan’s Director of Music)

St Dunstan’s Church 6pm-7pm

Bar will be open before & after the recital

Fantasia in C Minor BWV 562, J.S. Bach

Improvisations on the Stations of the Cross

Jack will be performing on the much heralded Walker organ in St Dunstan’s church.

Praised for his “brilliant infectious enthusiasm” by The Spectator, young conductor and keyboardist Jack Gonzalez-Harding is forging a career as one of the “leading lights” of his generation.

Recent and upcoming highlights include Jack’s debut guest conducting engagements with the London Mozart Players and Hallé Orchestra, alongside debuts at the Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, Barbican, and St. John’s Smith Square for Bach’s B Minor Mass. Already, Jack has established collaborative relationships with leading internationally acclaimed artists such as Dame Emma Kirkby, Nicholas Daniel, Mary Bevan, Fenella Humphreys, Zoë Martlew and Sir Mark Elder, for whom Jack has assisted.

Tickets £10 (Full time students free)

Tickets will be available at:

Online – https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/mayfieldfestival

Phone – 0333 666 3366 quoting ‘Mayfield Festival’

High Street – Sew Inspired

On Saturday 18 March 2023

Soiree at Manor Grange, Tunbridge Wells

with

Cello recital by Eddie Pogossian

Overall Winner of the 2022 Tunbridge Wells International Music Competition.

A chance to hear Eddie Pogossian, Overall Winner of the 2022 Tunbridge Wells International Music Competition, in the intimate setting of Manor Grange in Tunbridge Wells. Those of you who heard Eddie’s exquisite cello playing at his recital at St John’s Waterloo in October will know that you are in for a real treat.

Full program details to follow.

Time – start 7pm; finish 9.30pm

Price – £45 (£40 for Competition Friends & Patrons)- including supper and glass of wine

Tickets as usual will be available:

Online – https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/mayfieldfestival

Phone – 0333 666 3366 quoting ‘Mayfield Festival’

High Street – Sew Inspired

On Saturday 25th March 2023

Fenella Humphreys, violin

Jack Gonzalez-Harding, harpsichord

St Dunstan’s church

Fenella Humphreys and Jack Gonzalez-Harding share their programme, darkness to light. Well suited for the Lenten period, the programme is bookended by three of J. S. Bach’s profound yet rarely performed sonatas for violin and harpsichord. Between these works, the pilgrimage towards light will continue with the help of composers such as Biber, Leonarda and Couperin.

Fenella, winner of the 2018 BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Award has won critical admiration and audience acclaim with the grace and intensity of her playing. Having released two Bach 2 the Future albums praised by Gramophone Magazine and The Strad, Fenella will be the perfect duo partner for harpsichordist Jack Gonzalez-Harding, who alongside his work as Director of Music at St. Dunstan’s Church, Mayfield, is quickly gaining an international reputation for his ‘brilliant infectious enthusiasm’ (The Spectator) as a conductor, keyboardist and improviser, having appeared at the Wigmore Hall and St. John’s Smith Square and with the London Mozart Players and Hallé Orchestra during the past season.

Time: 19.30

Location: St Dunstan’s church Mayfield

Ticket price: £15

Tickets as usual will be available:

Online – https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/mayfieldfestival

Phone – 0333 666 3366 quoting ‘Mayfield Festival’

High Street – Sew Inspired

Do enjoy this year’s music from Mayfield’s various music makers.