Biography

Tim Reynish has recently been appointed to the prestigious staff of the International Chamber Music Studio at the Royal Northern College of Music. He 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, 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, 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, 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.

He was awarded a Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 1982 which enabled him to study the development and repertoire of the American symphonic wind band movement. 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, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Norway, Oman, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the USA. For ten years was Editor of the Novello Wind Band & Ensemble series and he is now Editor with Maecenas Music. His engagements recently have included concerts and conducting clinics in Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Latvia, Ireland, Israel, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA. In 2000 he toured Australia and New Zealand, conducting and lecturing on British wind music, and in the Fall was a Housewright Scholar at Florida State University; in Spring 2002 he was Visiting Professor at the School of Music, Baylor University, Texas, and during the Fall 2003 was Visiting Professor at University of Kentucky, Lexington. He was President of WASBE, the World Association for Symphonic Bands & Ensembles from 2001 until 2002.

In the Fall of 2005 he assumed the post of Senior Professor in Woodwind and Brass at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and conducted the Wind Ensemble in a gala concert at the Barbican, celebrating the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Guildhall. In the Spring of 2006 he was visiting Professor at Ithaca College, and in June returned to the Royal Northern College of Music in a programme of his commissions, including works by Adam Gorb, Christopher Marshall and Edwin Roxburgh. In the Autumn of 2006 he conducted performances of La Traviata for Clonter Farm Opera, Berlioz at the Barbican and a programme of British music in Russia.

His appearances in the USA have included conducting engagements at Universities of Arizona State, Bowling Green, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida State, Illinois, Iowa State, Ithaca College, Louisville, Michigan, Michigan State, Murray State, Syracuse, Stetson, Tennessee Tech, Texas at Austin, Texas Christian, Western Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Western Michigan.

Recent engagements include concerts at the Universities of Calgary and Nevada at Las Vegas, Cardiff University with the National Youth Wind Orchestra of Wales, with whom he premiered Adam Gorb’s Farewell. He returned to the Cheltenham Festival with the RNCM Wind Ensemble in a performance of Messiaen’s Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum.  Last season 2008 – 2009, his engagements included concerts with the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, Durham Sinfonia with Alexander Baillie, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and the Royal Northern College of Music. He conducted the RNCM at the WASBE Conference, Cincinnati, in July 2009. From January 2009 he was Visiting Professor at Cornell University, and in April Guest Conductor with the Dallas Wind Symphony.

Brookside Cottage                                                                                        
62 Moss Lane                                                                                              
Leyland                                                                                                      
Lancashire, PR25 4SH, UK

Phone  44 (0) 1772 421 079
Email  timreynish@tiscali.co.uk

Web    www.timreynish.com

Updated September- 2009

Read profile of Tim published in Winds Magazine, summer 2008.