Chair of Trustees
Simon Routh
Having spent many years as a senior civil servant, Simon now runs a vineyard producing sparkling wine in Devon and promotes concerts over the summer months. He has been a trustee of a number of musical and non-musical charities, including the Friends of Covent Garden and was chair of a charity providing financial support to mariners.
Simon was actively involved in the Redcliffe Concerts of British Music, the precursor to the Francis Routh Trust, both as a Trustee and in helping his father, Francis Routh, himself a composer, with the practical administration. It was through his father’s work on the promotion of British Music since the 1960s that Simon first developed an understanding of the challenges for British composers today; and he worked with his father to modernise the charity and establish it as the grant-giving entity that it now represents.
Trustee
William Howard
William is one of Britain’s leading pianists, enjoying a career that has taken him to over 40 different countries. His performing life consists of solo recitals, concerto performances and guest appearances with chamber ensembles and
instrumentalists. In 1983 he founded the Schubert Ensemble, with which he performed for the full 35 years of the Ensemble’s existence. William performs regularly at major venues and festivals in the UK and can be heard frequently
on BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM. He has made over forty CD recordings and premiered several dozen new works by leading composers from the UK and abroad.
Trustee
Rupert Ridgewell
Dr Rupert Ridgewell has worked as a curator in the music department of the British Library since 2000 and is currently responsible for the printed music collection, which consists of some 1.6 million items covering the period from 1501 to the present day. He has co-curated several exhibitions at the Library, notably Beethoven (2021-22) Poetry in Sound: the Music of Benjamin Britten (2013) and Wagner in London (2007). Rupert is also editor of the Concert Programmes Database, which resulted from a project he managed on secondment at the Royal College of Music, London (2004-2007) in collaboration with libraries and archives throughout the UK.
Trustee
Robert Summers
Robert is head of the Contemporary Music Editorial Department at Faber Music Ltd. He began his career in 2005, working in the
music libraries of the English National Opera and Royal Opera House, preparing musical material for performance. During this time he helped to typeset new editions of standard-repertoire works , and collaborated with contemporary composers such as Harrison Birtwistle (
The Minotaur, 2008) and Mark-Anthony Turnage (Anna Nicole, 2011
) to implement changes in newly-commissioned works. Robert moved into music publishing in 2017 and currently maintains the performance and publication catalogues of Faber Music’s house composers, including Oliver Knussen, Tansy
Davies, George Benjamin and Thomas Adès.
Trustee
Freya Waley-Cohen
Freya is a British-American London based composer. Freya was the 2019-20 Associate Composer of the Wigmore Hall. She was associate composer contemporary music series, Nightmusic at St David’s Hall, from 2018-2021. Winner of a 2017 RPS Composition Prize, she held an Open Space Residency at Snape Maltings from 2015-2017 and was 2016-18 Associate Composer of Nonclassical.
Freya was a founding member and artistic director of Listenpony concert series and record label which commissioned over 50 composers from 2012-2022.