Welcome to the Barnes Music Festival
Our 2025 Festival was the most successful ever with many outstanding performances and record audiences. We were delighted to welcome 6500 people to hear high quality music at 36 events in venues across Barnes, performed by 900 musicians of all ages.
With the theme of Music & Literature, exploring how literature has shaped music and vice-versa, our programme ranged from the opening concert by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and a pre-festival talk by Sir Antonio Pappano to performances by Opera Holland Park as well as The Gesualdo Six and the King’s College London Choir.
Other highlights included the return of pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, this time playing with Samson Tsoy on two pianos, and of Roderick Williams in a new programme accompanied by Andrew West. Alistair McGowan reprised the musical portrait of Erik Satie to mark his centenary and Gyles Brandreth joined with pianist Stefan Bednarczyk to present Shakespeare’s Music. We closed the festival with Elgar’s mighty Dream of Gerontius.
Other top musicians included Jeneba Kanneh-Mason piano, Cordelia Williams piano with Tamsin Waley-Cohen violin, Tama Matheson actor with Clare Hammond piano with a reprise of Byron Don Juan, Richard Gowers organ, Helen Charleston soprano with Toby Carr lute, Harry Baker jazz trio and Henry Chandler violin with John Paul Ekins piano.
Our local groups Barnes Music Society, Barnes Choir, Barnes Community Choir and Barnes Concert Band brought their special performances to the festival and St Michael’s hosted a Come & Sing Dido & Aeneas conducted by Hilary Campbell.
We were pleased to have as our first Artist-in-Residence the exciting horn-player Ben Goldscheider who performed in the opening concert, adjudicated the Barnes Young Musician of the Year and gave his own concert with pianist Giuseppe Guarrera.
Our Schools Programme continued with the engagement of local primary schools, and our local secondary schools hosting masterclasses for the best young musicians. We even had a Toddlers Concert for the very young.
We are now well into planning next year’s Festival taking place from 7 to 22 March 2026 with the theme Musical Roots. The programme will be announced in December 2025 with tickets going on sale in mid-January. Priority booking for Friends and Benefactors starts in mid-December.
We are grateful to all our supporters especially our principal partner Chestertons, our major partner Russell-Cooke, to the Benefactors and Friends of Barnes Music Festival and above all to the musicians who share their music and their passion with us.
We hope you enjoy the Barnes Music Festival, either as a regular visitor and supporter or as a newcomer. Please save the dates of 7 to 22 March 2026 for next year’s festival and we look forward to seeing you there.
Andrew Summers, Chairman & James Day, Artistic Director