Barnes Music Festival in South West London is an annual celebration of music-making which includes choral, instrumental, orchestral, opera, jazz and film events with international stars and local groups and schools performing at venues across Barnes.

The Festival celebrates music-making of the highest standard in conjunction with established and emerging stars. It also raises considerable funds for local charities.

The Festival theme for 2018 is Peace & Harmonies linking to the centenary of the end of the First World War but very much focusing on the positive power of music : Music succeeds where language simply can’t. It can console and comfort, inspire, thrill, excite and unite. Music can be both intensely individual as well as a unifying experience.

For 2018 we welcome James Day as our new Artistic Director, following on the very successful five year tenure of founder Artistic Director Daniel Turner. James is Director of Music of the Pimlico Music Foundation and Fulham Camerata as well as Director of Tiffin Boys’ Choir. James studied at Durham University where he was Director of Music at University College. A prize-winning Choral Conductor at the Royal Academy of Music James has worked with conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Bernard Haitink, Jakub Hruša, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vladimir Jurowski and Simon Halsey and chorus mastered for the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonia, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. James brings to the Festival a wealth of choral, conducting and musical experience and we are very much looking forward to working with him.

The 2018 Festival runs from 10 to 25 March 2018. The programme will be published in October 2017

Venues