About Us

Martin Bussey combines the roles of composer and conductor, working along the borders of Cheshire, Shropshire and Wales. He currently directs the Chester Bach Singers and Cantiones Choir of Oswestry, and is a vocal tutor at Manchester University. He is Chairman of the Finzi Friends and a trustee of Kantos Choir. Martin’s recent works include three staged works which received critical acclaim: Mary’s Hand, a one-woman show revisiting history’s view of Mary Tudor; Timeless Figure, focused on Shropshire clockmaker Joyce of Whitchurch, and Shropshire Lass, setting the poems of Mary Webb. His 2021 commission from Pinner Music Festival, A Brother Abroad, a collaboration with Anthony Pinching, has also been performed at Ludlow English Song Weekend and the Southwell Music Festival. It was recorded by Resonus Classics for release in November 2024. Other recordings on the label include Through a glass, a recording of songs, by Marcus Farnsworth, James Baillieu and an ensemble directed by Thomas Kemp; and In no strange land, a retrospective of Martin’s choral music performed by Sonoro directed by Neil Ferris.

Martin was a Choral Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge. He studied composition with Robin Holloway and singing with John Carol Case, then as a postgraduate singer at the RNCM with Nicholas Powell. He ran the aural, academic music and choral programmes at Chetham’s School of Music, where he taught from 1988 to 2013. Martin has a long association with Ludlow English Song, where his music is performed regularly.

Martin has played a leading role in the Young Composer Platform since its inception, enabling talented young composers to work with leading figures including Judith Bingham, Huw Watkins, Helen Grime Tarik O’Regan and, most recently, Julian Phillips.

Dr Ewart Carson was born in Liverpool and educated at Liverpool College and at the University of St Andrews. Following a short period in industry working for Philips, he moved to what is now City St George’s, University of London. Professionally a Chartered Engineer, he was Director of Health Sciences there and headed a Department that was applying engineering and IT in medicine. This involved working with leading medical teams across Europe in areas as diverse as intensive care medicine, diabetes and telecare. His position at the university is now that of Emeritus Professor in Systems Science.

In 2001 Ewart and his wife moved to Ludlow, wanting to live in a small town in which there was a good deal of activity, particularly in the arts. Since then they have both been active in a range of volunteering roles, particularly in St Laurence’s Church, one of England’s largest churches, and one that is becoming increasingly prominent as a regional performance centre for the arts. Amongst Ewart’s several activities there, he chairs the Arts Committee, which has responsibility for over 30 concerts each year.

As well as promoting an annual series of chamber concerts and organ recitals, they delight in being able to host events of national importance such as the Ludlow Piano Festival (of which he is a Trustee) and the Ludlow English Song Weekend. We have secured a Steinway Model D piano which has been totally rebuilt and re-voiced to the highest concert standards, enhancing the quality of musical provision during the Weekend, and attracting performers of the highest quality to the Piano Festival.

As the Ludlow-based Director of Ludlow Song, Ewart is able to use his local knowledge to help with arrangements in Ludlow, seeking to ensure there is a warm welcome and artistically stimulating environment to all who are involved in the Ludlow English Song Weekend, whether as performers or audience members.

Paul Ives is a founding director of Ludlow Song. He joined the Finzi Friends committee in 2014, having been a member of Finzi Friends with his wife Pat since 1995, since when they have attended events at Ashmansworth and all the Ludlow weekends. They live in East Horsley, Surrey.

Paul retired from the Defence Electronics industry in 2004, after over 40 years as a Chartered Engineer specialising in naval and airborne radar and command systems, in order to devote more time to opera, vocal and choral music and other interests. He served as a committee member and chairman of Surrey Festival Choir, which was formed out of the Surrey County Music association founded by Vaughan Williams to encourage participation in music throughout the county. He has also participated since the mid-1970s in the Leith Hill Musical Festival, which was directed by Vaughan Williams from 1905 to 1953. Pat and Paul have attended the annual Three Choirs Festival since 1987 and have met huge numbers of audience members by acting as ushering stewards at the concerts and other events.

Having studied singing with a number of distinguished voice teachers, Paul has performed in many operas and concerts in London and Surrey over the past 30 years. He first encountered, and was attracted immediately to, the works of Gerald Finzi in the baritone songs and choral works and his instrumental works.

“LESW has been a unique festival since its inception in 2001, held since then in the town that seems to epitomise English song through its connection with the poetry of A E Housman. However, although rooted in the golden age of 19th and 20th Century British vocal music, it captures the influences of English speaking countries throughout the world, as well as those of lieder, mélodie and other art songs, to present a contemporary setting for the appreciation and discussion of song in its widest connotations.”

David Melville is a retired general surgeon and keen amateur musician. David originally studied medicine at Merton College Oxford where apart from medical studies and playing flute in the university orchestra he was also involved in the running of the Kodaly Choir. This amateur choir had been started by Kodaly’s pupil Lazlo Heltay and at that time specialised in putting on Larger Scale choral works. Completing his medical studies at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, David ran the student orchestra and developed a series of lunchtime concerts in the Hospital Chapel as well as organising a performance of Britten’s war requiem with the combined hospitals music society. Working as a junior doctor left little time for music making but David found time to be involved in launching concerts at Queen Square with Mrs Symon in which he also performed on his flute.

As a consultant surgeon at St George’s Hospital in London, David was a founder member and first treasurer of the European Doctors Orchestra. With doctors from across Europe, he played in concerts in Poland, Germany, Romania and Hungary as well as several concerts in London. In retirement, David has been involved in running summer Clarinet courses for Undergraduates and Postgraduates from the Royal College of Music. He has hosted tours from the Imperial College Chamber Choir at his home in Guildford as well as organising fundraising concerts for the Stoneligh Youth Orchestra in which both he and his youngest son have played.

David continues to play the organ at a local church in Surrey and to sing in an amateur choir in Epsom.

In 2012 Dr Clare Taylor PhD, FRCP, FRCPath, was co-founder of City Music Foundation with her husband Sir Roger Gifford who died in 2021. She was a Trustee until 2015, and since then she has been employed as its Managing Director, and now CEO. CMF is a registered charity offering promotion, career development, coaching and project management to exceptional emerging professional musicians in the fragile early stages of their careers – turning talent into success.

Clare trained as a doctor at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College and obtained a PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund before going on to become a consultant haematologist at the Royal Free Hospital, a director within the NHSBT and a consultant to MHRA. She is a Fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Pathologists. A partnership has been forged between CMF and Barts Heritage which brings exceptional, wide-ranging music to the historic heart of St Bartholomew’s Hospital with performances hosted by Barts Heritage in the Great Hall, exploring health and wellbeing through heritage and music.

Alongside her medical career, Clare has been immersed in music all her life. She sang with the choir of St Bartholomew the Great for many years, and with the Tallis Chamber Choir and Holst Singers, as well as with Collegium Musicum for whom she was a soloist in St John’s Smith Square. In 2000 she was a founder member and trustee of the Choir of the 21st Century. She has sung under the baton of many conductors including Thomas Ades, Martyn Brabbins, Hilary Davan Wetton, Mark Elder, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Richard Hickox, Neeme Jarvi, Stephen Layton, Charles Mackerras, Roger Norrington and Guy Woolfenden. As well as being a Director of Ludlow Song, Clare is a director and trustee of Two Moors Festival. She is a liveryman of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries and a member of the Athenaeum.