12th February 7.45pm

Trevor Hughes, piano and James Ridson, recorder

James has had an almost lifelong fascination with the recorder. His formal studies were with the late Alan Davis and subsequently with Rebecca Miles. He gained his LRSM with distinction in 2011 and in the same year was placed runner-up in the international competition for blind musicians at the Jan Dale Conservatoire in Prague.
 
His repertoire and work span the Middle Ages to ‘wet on the page’ with several dedications, commissions and compositions to his name. A highlight of 2023 is the recording of the exquisite concerto written for him by Andrew Downes with the Central England Camerata under Anthony Bradbury. The recording is now available on YouTube.
 
James is a founder member of the British Paraorchestra, directed by Charles Hazlewood with whom he performed at the closing of the 2012 Paralympic Games with Coldplay. More recently, James features in the Paraorchestra’s debut album ‘The Unfolding’ by Hannah Peel. Released on Real World Records, it topped the classical charts in April 2022. Other highlights have included appearances at the Wales Millennium Centre, London’s Barbican and Birmingham’s Town Hall and Symphony Halls in projects with Brett Anderson of Suede, Extraordinary Bodies and the CBSO. James is also recorder player with RNS Moves, an ensemble of musicians from the Royal Northern Sinfonia and musicians with disabilities. Their work includes arrangements of Bach, Vivaldi, Shostakovich and Bartok as well as contemporary works by Joe Cuttler, Sally Beamish and Kate Whitley among others.
 

James has a passion for creating recital programmes to introduce the recorder to new audiences. He has performed at King’s Place and St. Martin-in-the-Fields and The Handel House Museum in London, as well as countless festivals, churches and other venues across the UK and beyond. In 2015 he made his debut appearance at the Wigmore Hall with theorbo player Matthew Wadsworth in a concert celebrating the Elizabeth Eagle-Bott memorial fund which supported James’s studies.
 
He has appeared as soloist with the Czech virtuosi, London Musici alongside Piers Adams and Devon Baroque under violinist Margaret Faultless. More unusual engagements have included the Bath & West showground for a staging of Britten’s Noyes Fludde, a pod on the London Eye and a performance for the Japanese government in Soporo. James has a particular interest in memorising music. He has devised workshops on the topic for the Woodhouse Recorder Course, Birmingham Conservatoire, The Eton Parry society and the Easter Recorder Course.
 
Trevor Hughes
Trevor is a Graduate of the Royal College of Music (where he studied organ, piano, and viola), winning the Colles Prize, and an Associate of the Royal College of Organists, winning the Doris Wookey Prize.

As an organist, he has performed on the organs in Birmingham Symphony Hall, Leeds Town Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, and St. John’s, Smith Square, London, St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, and on the cathedral organs in Canterbury, Ely, Gibraltar, Norwich, St. Alban’s, St. Asaph, and Southwark. He has also performed on major organs in America, France (including Rouen Cathedral), Austria (including Salzburg Dom Cathedral), and Germany (including the Elisabethkirche, and University Church in Marburg).
 
His lifelong experience in church music recently reached something of a milestone, when, in 2022, he retired after 27 very happy years as Director of Music at Holy Saviour Church in Hitchin. In 2003, he took the Church Choir to Barbados where it performed both in concerts, and broadcasts on Caribbean Radio and Television. Later, in the same year, he formed a second, female voice, choir in the church, The Radcliffe Singers, which sang a wide range of sacred and secular music. Both choirs recorded two CDs, and toured, both in the UK and also to Nuits St. Georges, in France.
 
He has accompanied recitals in the Purcell Room, the Wigmore Hall, and on BBC Radio 3, as well as in many music clubs over the country, and for over ten years he contributed regularly to BBC Schools Radio music programmes, as keyboards player, musical director, and arranger. He has also made a number of educational recordings for Lindsay Music, and Faber Music.
 
Equally at home in a wide range of musical styles, Trevor has conducted many musicals in the theatre, and he has also played keyboards in a number of West End shows. His freelance work as both accompanist and choral conductor has taken him on numerous trips to the USA, as well as to Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Holland.
 
For some 10 years or so, until 2001, Trevor was Musical Director of the Stevenage Choral Society, whom he directed in many large-scale choral works, including a number of first performances. He directed the choir on concert tours to Austria and Germany, and in 1996, on its first tour of the USA. In a concert with the choir in 2000, he performed as soloist, with his wife Gillian, in the première of the Double Concerto for Clarinet, Organ, and Strings, a work written for them by Douglas Coombes. He was also formerly Musical Director of the north London female voice choir “Jubilate!”, for whom he has written a number of jazz-inspired arrangements.
 
His other musical work with children has encompassed teaching piano, organ, and theory, and adjudicating music festivals, both at home and abroad (including Hong Kong). Since 2008, he has also co-adjudicated the annual National Youth Choral Competition at the Royal Festival Hall, and the Barbican Centre, in aid of Barnardo’s, for which organisation he has also performed regularly in fund-raising concerts, including annual concerts on the organs of both the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Festival Hall.