Patrons
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Trustees & Officers | Membership of the BKA | Policies & Procedures
Madame Sarolta Kodály is the widow of Zoltan Kodály. She is a professional singer and the Honorary Life President of the International Kodály Society.
George Caird has enjoyed a unique career as an oboist, teacher and educationalist. After studying at the Royal Academy of Music and Cambridge University, George pursued a freelance career as an oboist, which included orchestral playing, chamber music and solo engagements. He worked with many of London’s major orchestras including the London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and City of London Sinfonia and particularly as a member of The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields from 1984 to 1991. He has also been a member of a number of leading ensembles, notably as a founder member of The Albion Ensemble.
George has toured for the British Council in China, the Far East, India, Egypt, Tunisia and Canada as well as performing in concerts and broadcasts in most European countries. He has recorded for Chandos, Nimbus, Hyperion, Meridian and Proudsound labels with solo and chamber music repertoire. In July 1996, he was the director of Stage 96, a chamber music course run by La Caixa de Pensiones in Catelonia and in September 1996 he was a juror in the Munich International Oboe Competition. George has also sat on adjudication panels for the BBC Young Musician of the Year, the Audi Junior Musician, the Shell LSO Competition, the YCAT awards and the Chamber Music Competition for Schools.
George has been involved in many areas of music education: teaching, devising educational programmes, coaching chamber ensembles, conducting and coaching youth orchestras and as a founder member of the British Double Reed Society. He was appointed as a professor of oboe at the Royal Academy of Music in 1984 where he became head of woodwind in 1987 and Head of Orchestral Studies in 1991. Since September 1993, George has been Principal of Birmingham Conservatoire within the University of Central England. He holds a number of directorships and trusteeships including Symphony Hall Birmingham and West Midland Arts. George is secretary of the Federation of British Conservatories and Chair of the Music Education Council.
Douglas Coombes originally taught at High Schools in North
Somerset and Bristol before becoming Assistant Music Adviser to Norfolk
Education Authority. In 1968 he joined the BBC as a music producer, working
on "Singing Together" and "Time and Tune". In 1988 he started to work
freelance and founded "The New English Concert Orchestra" and the "National
Junior Music Club" which publishes resource magazines for schools and runs
music courses for teachers. Performing to young people is an important part
of Douglas Coombes' work. He is also a prolific composer and has written for
all ages, professional and non-professional with support from the Arts
Councils of England and Scotland. Douglas Coombes undertakes music
consultancy work for schools; is a member Adjudicator of the British
Federation of Festivals; and for recreation he directs The Amici Singers,
which he founded in 1978.
David Hill was appointed chief conductor of the BBC Singers in 2006, following a four year directorship of the music at St John’s College, Cambridge. He has been the Music Director of the Bach Choir since 1998 when he succeeded Sir David Willcocks. He was educated at
Chetham's School of Music, and was made a Fellow of the Royal College of
Organists at the age of 17. He went as Organ Scholar to St John's College,
Cambridge, where he was assistant to Dr George Guest and studied organ with
Gillian Weir and Peter Hurford. As a conductor he has a broad-ranging
discography for Decca/Argo, Hyperion, and Virgin Classics, with the
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Brandenburg Consort, City of London Sinfonia,
and the choirs of Westminster and Winchester Cathedrals. He is also in
demand as an organ recitalist.
Iván Fischer - “CD collectors who are jaded by bland
musical proficiency should spend an hour with Iván Fischer who has
established an orchestra that values authentic musical expression above the
more mechanical aspects of performing.” (Gramophone 12/97)
Born on 20 Jan 1951, Iván Fischer is known as ‘an enemy of routine’ and is undoubtedly one of the most creative conductors of this generation. Despite achieving very early career success, conducting world wide in the 1970's, he felt that something was missing from the music making process in orchestras. He identified “intuition, listening, the conductor player relationship” as areas of concern. He returned to Hungary, a country that he says, “musically speaking, has a lot of oil beneath its soil, that no one has really drilled for” and in 1983 founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra to instigate the changes he saw as necessary.
Growing up in a family of musicians where he had to resist the tradition “that only pianists (like his brother) could become conductors”, he first switched from playing piano to violin and then cello. He then went to study in Vienna where he graduated from Hans Swarowsky’s famous conducting class after selecting an unconventional combination of musical fields: cello, early music (having studied with Nikolaus Harnoncourt) and conducting.
Gilbert de Greeve is the President of the
International Kodály Society. He took on this role in 1995, having
served as Vice-President since 1983. Gilbert is a pianist, composer and
educator. He is a graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, Belgium
where he studied performance and composition. He also studied privately with
Rudolf Serkin and Eugene Ormandy in the United States and spent a year of
research at Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore in 1969 – 1970.
Gilbert developed a Kodály program for the State Music Academy of Antwerp in close collaboration with the Ferenc Liszt Academy and with Hungarian master teachers.
From 193 – 1970 Gilbert was a professor at the Music Academy of Gent. From 1970 until 1998 he was the Director of the State Music Academy of Antwerp and professor of the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp. He is now Professor Emeritus of the latter.
He has performed world-wide as a soloist, as a lied accompanist and in chamber music. He has published articles in various magazines and a song cycle of settings of the poetry of James Joyce.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the
foremost composers of our time and lives in the Orkney Islands off the north
coast of Scotland where he writes most of his music. His compositions range
across the widest gamut of musical genres and styles and his power to
communicate forcefully and directly with his audiences manifests itself
whether it be in his profoundly argued symphonic works, in his sometimes
outrageous witty light orchestral works or in the delightful music-theatre
works written to be performed by non-specialist children.
Maxwell Davies is also active as a conductor and has recently finished ten years as Conductor/Composer of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, and is the Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He guest-conducts orchestras both in Europe and the United States.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was appointed Master of the Queen’s Music in March 2004. He is currently concentrating his compositional efforts on chamber music which will be performed at Wigmore Hall in London by the Maggini Quartet. More detailed information is available on www.maxopus.com
The British Kodály Academy is affiliated to:
The
International Kodály Society
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