The Kent Sinfonia, a leading freelance professional orchestra based in the County of Kent, has members who mostly either live in Kent or have links with the County. Many also play with major London orchestras and throughout the country.
Kent Sinfonia was originally founded in 1962 by Kent County Music Adviser Béla de Csilléry, as an orchestra for local professionals, talented amateurs and outstanding music students. The orchestra became fully professional in 1995, at the same time becoming a registered charity and limited company.
One of the foremost orchestras in the South East, Kent Sinfonia works with international soloists and also offers a platform for outstanding young artists. It aims to bring live orchestral music to all including, through its successful educational projects, the next generation of concert-goers. Our education concert programme Birds and Beasts! has been performed several times with great success, to many school-children in different venues.
Kent Sinfonia returned from its third concert tour of China in January 2014, having played 30 concerts over three years in many cities including Shanghai, Xi’an, Hangzhou and Suzhou. The orchestra may undertake a fourth tour in the future.
Other notable performances have included a residency with New Sussex Opera (conductor Nicholas Jenkins), with performances of Mozart: Idomeneo, Vaughan Williams: the Poisoned Kiss and Offenbach: Die Rheinnixen, a Canterbury Festival concert with the inspirational one-handed pianist Nicholas McCarthy as soloist in Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand, followed by a repeat concert performance with Nicholas in St John’s Smith Square, London. In 2017, a small orchestral ensemble worked with Kent Opera on performances of Verdi’s Otello in London, Brighton and Deal. We have also recently performed concerts in partnership with the outstanding Canterbury- based Caritas Chamber Choir and their young conductor Benedict Preece, who was awarded the Genesis Sixteen Conducting Scholarship 2017-18.
In September 2017, Kent Sinfonia was invited to record a CD with rising-star soprano Katie Marshall. The recording took place at the Gresham Centre, London with Barnaby Smith, artistic director of acclaimed vocal ensemble VOCES8, as producer and conductor. The CD Voice Divine was released in June 2018. This was followed by a sell-out concert in September at the Colyer Fergusson Hall UKC, promoted by Rotary International as part of their Engage 2018 conference weekend, with Katie and orchestra leader Christian Halstead as soloists. In November 2018 Kent Sinfonia was invited to perform for a superb Armistice Concert in Sittingbourne, Kent, joining several choirs and other artists from the Swale area.
Working with promoters Black Cat Events, in December 2019 Kent Sinfonia also performed Howard Blake’s music live in concert for Raymond Briggs’ films The Snowman and The Bear with conductor James Ross, at the Winter Gardens, Margate. The performances received excellent feedback from both audience and venue, and this has resulted in the intention of further performance-planning with Black Cat Events.
Forthcoming plans also include further choral concerts (Kent Sinfonia is currently resident orchestra for Ashtead Choral Society, Surrey), outdoor/indoor concerts and education programmes, including a project with Kent-based Iranian composer Shohreh Shakoory. Kent Sinfonia ensemble workshops are also planned for schools, plus an opera project and an ongoing concert series featuring outstanding young soloists.
Kent Sinfonia supports the promotion of work by new composers, and also has a special interest in performing works by lesser known early-mid 20th century British composers. The orchestra’s first CD, Lost England, features music by George Butterworth and Walter Leigh, British composers both killed at a young age in world wars.
Kent Sinfonia has also worked with many conductors including David Angus, Andrew Charity, Bela de Csilléry, Robert Dean, Benjamin Ellin, John Hancorn, Philip Hesketh, Paul Hoskins, Brian Kay, Neil Jenkins, Nicholas Jenkins, Richard Jenkinson, Andrew Lowen, Neil Matthews, Benedict Preece, Malcolm Riley, James Ross, Barnaby Smith, Andrew Storey, Jack Thompson, Robert Turrell, Alan Vincent, Steven Wassell, Brian Wright.
Concert reviews:
Since the days of Purcell and Handel, English composers have often excelled at royal music, or more accurately, marches and anthems for great regal occasions. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) did not quite fit into this tradition, with Elgar, Bliss and Walton largely assuming that role during his lifetime. He used to say he would never write such music. He nevertheless famously composed for Elizabeth ll’s coronation (‘O Taste and See,’ a setting of Psalm 34, and ‘All People That On Earth Do Dwell,’ based on Psalm 100) although in a way that stressed the link between monarch and people – which is characteristic of his complex character and work, bridging ancient and modern, mystical and democratic.
Vaughan Williams also wrote for monarchs less directly, in his many incidental orchestral and vocal pieces for (or inspired by) Shakespeare’s history plays – dramas laying bare the trials and tribulations of the kings of old, the dark moments of their reigns as well as the moments of jubilation. Ironically enough, on the strength of this latest CD release from Albion Records, it could be argued that Vaughan Williams was in fact the most prolific servant of the Royal remit of any English composer, commemorating England’s battles, bloodshed, dynastic struggles, civil wars and crownings of Kings across the entire span of the country’s life as a monarchy.
Shakespeare being the inspiration, the disc offers us such gems as the 1913 Stratford Suite, in which ‘Greensleeves’ and several other famous tunes from Tudor antiquity make an appearance. Throughout the 72 minutes of music carefully curated and conducted by Vaughan Williams expert, Dr. James Ross, the listener will recognise folk-tunes which appear in other guises, such as Henry lV’s ‘Princess Royal’ — also heard in the quick-march opening to the composer’s jaunty ‘Sea Songs,’ ‘Halfe Hannikin’ (found in Sir John in Love and Fat Knight), Dowland’s ‘Pavane Lachrymae’ which was used by Sir Granville Bantock in Old English Dances, and finally, the noble plainsong melody which makes an appearance in the semi-final movement of Tippett’s Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles, and in the Allan Gray film score for the classic Powell and Pressburger film, A Canterbury Tale — the uplifting ‘Angelus ad Virginem.’
However, what makes this recording such an exciting find, the production such a success — so atmospheric and authentic, throughout — is the use of a smaller orchestra, in this instance the poised, elegant, silvery strings (listen out for the latter quality in Track 18) of the often-overlooked Kent Sinfonia. Recorded in Kent churches (Wye and Hythe) James Ross’s players bring an atmosphere of the theatre to the proceedings, but sacrifice nothing in the expansive and spine-tingling moments in Richard ll, or in Henry V’s appointment with destiny in the “vasty fields of France” (the seven-minute long ‘Henry V Overture’).
The recording has plenty of ‘air’ around it, so the dry acoustic of studios and modern concert-halls is, mercifully, avoided. A Tudorish brass sound, spot-on woodwind and martial side-drums ring out from the spaces of the mediaeval churches (so often the best recording venues), whilst the choral contribution of the Albion Singers in Henry lV – especially the rich baritones – suggests a larger number of singers than were actually present at the making of the record. Guildhall-trained soprano, Eloise Irving, also brings her magic to solo songs, such as in the famous melancholy setting from Othello, ‘Sing willow, willow willow.’
With informative programme notes, excellent photography and artwork from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society’s John Francis, the CD is complete joy from start to finish: my ‘album of the year.’
CD details: Vaughan Williams, Royal Throne of Kings, Albion Records, ALBCD062
Stuart Millson, ‘Sounds of sovereigns’, Posted on
‘…the Kent Sinfonia responded generously to Nicholas Jenkins’ characteristically expansive direction, not least in the many deftly-edged orchestral solos…’ (Mark Pappenheim: ‘Opera’ magazine – Vaughan Williams: The Poisoned Kiss – performances with New Sussex Opera)
‘Each of these orchestral works of Ravel are by no means easy for any orchestra, but from the excellent playing in the opening of ‘Mother Goose’, it was clear that the Kent Sinfonia was up to the task, with some excellent individual and corporate musicianship’ (Robert Matthew-Walker: Musical Opinion magazine – concert, St. John’s, Smith Square, London).
‘The playing of Kent Sinfonia was a sheer delight as they filled the church with a full-on, well- blended sound, with many opportunities for the individual instrumentalists to shine in Haydn’s masterpiece. Whether playing in their own right or underpinning the soloists and choir, they were consistently superb…For me, one of the memorable highlights was Lucinda Cox singing of the creation of various birds with the wind section of Kent Sinfonia having immense fun interpreting their sounds’’…’The whole event was a joy from beginning to end…’ (Ashtead Choral Society concert:- Haydn: The Creation 2019 – review by Sue S. Meyer)
‘Conductor Nicholas Jenkins drew a clean and poised performance from the orchestra…’ (Ruth Elleson: Opera Today – Offenbach: Die Rheinnixen (The Rhine Fairies – performances with New Sussex Opera)
‘…the Kent Sinfonia was faultless in its various renditions of familiar and well-loved pieces.’ ‘… a second superb performance with the Kent Sinfonia….this was a night that will be remembered for a very long while’. (Festival Proms, Tonbridge Castle – Kent & Sussex Courier)
Lost England CD reviews:
‘…lightness of touch…the accomplished performers of the Kent Sinfonia…a joy throughout’ (Keith Ames: Musician – Musicians’ Union journal)
‘Unique and uniquely valuable recordings of Walter Leigh from Malcolm Riley and the Kent Sinfonia’ (Rob Barnett: MusicWeb International/British Music Society).
‘…a valuable issue, well played by the Kent Sinfonia, whose fresh sound I like…Strongly recommended’ (Philip Scowcroft: Journal into Melody [The Robert Farnon Society])