Principal Guest Conductor

Tim Reynish (Resident Guest Conductor)

Dr Timothy Reynish has emerged as one of the leading conductors of wind bands and wind ensembles in the world. In the past few years he has conducted many of the principal professional bands in Asia, Europe, North and South America; these include civilian bands such as Dallas Wind Symphony, State of São Paulo Symphonic Band, Brazil, Volga Wind Orchestra of Saratov, Russia, Cordoba Symphonic Band, Argentina, Philharmonic Winds, Singapore, and leading military bands including the “President’s Own” US Marine Band, Staff Band of the Norwegian Army, US Military Academy West Point, Singapore Armed Forces Band, Croatian Army Symphonic Wind Orchestra Zagreb, Hungarian Army Symphonic Band Budapest, Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, the Band of the Royal Marines, Portsmouth, and the US Coast Guard Band.

His conducting studies were on short courses with George Hurst at the Canford Summer School, Sir Charles Groves and Sir Adrian Boult, with Dean Dixon in Hilversum and Franco Ferrara in Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where he won the Diploma of Merit. A prize winner in the Mitropoulos International Conducting Competition in New York, he has conducted concerts with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the BBC Regional Orchestras and the London Symphony Orchestra as well as in Norway, Holland and Germany, and opera in Sweden.

In 1975 he was invited by Sir Charles Groves to become tutor for the Postgraduate Conducting Course at the Royal Northern College of Music. Two years later he succeeded Philip Jones as Head of School of Wind & Percussion, a post he retired from after a quarter of a century. At the RNCM, he conducted a wide range of opera, including Marriage of Figaro, Zauberflote, La Boehme, Erwartung, and several operas by Britten. With the RNCM Symphony Orchestra his performances included symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner and Mahler, as well as Strauss tone poems, Firebird, Petrouchka and the Rite of Spring, the Verdi Requiem and Tippett’s Child of Our Time. In the following two decades he developed the wind orchestra and ensemble of the RNCM to become recognised as one of the best in the world, commissioning works from composers such as Richard Rodney Bennett, John Casken, Thea Musgrave, Aulis Sallinen, Adam Gorb and Kenneth Hesketh, performing regularly in major Festivals such as Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Huddersfield and Three Choirs, broadcasting for BBC and Classic FM, playing at three WASBE Conferences and making commercial compact discs for Doyen, Serendipity and Chandos.

He has given clinics, lectured, guest conducted and adjudicated in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the USA. For ten years, he was Editor of the Novello Wind Band & Ensemble series and he is now Editor with Maecenas Music. In the decade since his retirement, he has held semester-long visiting professorships at Baylor University, University of Kentucky, Ithaca College, Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Cornell University. His appearances in the USA have included conducting engagements at Universities of Arizona State, Bowling Green, Colorado, Connecticut, Dartmouth College, Florida State, Illinois, Iowa State, Ithaca College, Louisville, Michigan, Michigan State, Murray State, North Dakota, Syracuse, Stetson, Tennessee Tech, Texas at Austin, Texas Christian, Western Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Western Michigan.

Engagements in 2012 include concerts with Hong Kong Festival Winds, North Dakota State University, Dartmouth College and the US Coast Guard Band. He was recently honoured by appointment to the International Faculty of Chamber Music, Royal Northern College of Music. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the State University of the Arts, Kharkiv, Ukraine, and was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonic Winds, Singapore.