Tim Reynish, renowned conductor from Great Britain, spent September 25th through the 29th in residence with the University of Louisville Wind Ensemble. This was Reynish’s third visit to Louisville during the past decade. As expected, his insight, fine musicianship and wit was appreciated by all. During his stay, the ensemble prepared Kenneth Hesketh’s Danceries (Set 2), a large work that is a modern take on 17th-century dance themes. Danceries (Set 2) was featured in a concert on Sunday, September 29th on which Reynish conducted. In addition, Mr. Reynish also conducted a rehearsal with the University of Louisville Symphonic Band and presented a repertoire session for graduate conductors and composers.
Tim Reynish has recently been appointed to the prestigious staff of the International Chamber Music Studio at the Royal Northern College of Music. In the nineties he emerged as one of the leading conductors of wind bands and wind ensembles in the world, and 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 the 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, and the Band of the Royal Marines, Portsmouth.
He comes to the wind world via a thorough grounding in orchestral music and opera, having studied horn with Aubrey Brain and Frank Probyn and been a member of the National Youth Orchestra for six years. He was a music scholar at Cambridge, working under Raymond Leppard and Sir David Willcocks and held principal horn positions with the Northern Sinfonia, Sadler’s Wells Opera (now ENO) and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. At Birmingham in the seventies, he founded the Birmingham Sinfonietta from members of the CBSO and gave a series of contemporary concerts; he regularly directed the London Contemporary Players and was Guest Conductor with the Amsterdam Sinfonia.
His conducting studies were on short courses with George Hurst at 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. For many years he was Principal Conductor with the Merseyside Youth Orchestra and staff conductor with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Artists with whom he has worked include James Galway, Melinda Maxwell, Gervase de Peyer, Frank Lloyd, John Wallace, Joe Alessi, Evelyn Glennie, Andrew Watkinson, Alexander Baillie, Colin Carr, Julian Lloyd Webber, Jane Manning, Christine Rice, John Tomlinson, Martin Roscoe and Peter Donohoe.
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, Die Zauberflöte, 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.
