Welcome

Countdown to 100 Years

The Centenary of the North London Festival is in November 2020 and we are currently planning for the 2020 festival to be as special as possible. A few of the pages of this website have been updated, but beware that others still refer to 2019. We will update our website once we are ready to receive entries for 2020.

We launched our centenary celebrations with a very successful concert in the Rosslyn Hill Chapel on Friday 15th November. This concert was the launch of our idea to move towards giving more performance opportunities to the stars of our festival.

Memories of the Festival

Also as part of the centenary celebrations we would like to hear from anyone and especially professional musicians who took part in the festival as children.

Entries to the 2020 festival

We are not yet ready to receive entries for the 2020 festival. Please wait until 2020 entry is open before trying to apply.

News of Asagi Nakata – Winner of the Emanuel Trophy in 2008

We are very pleased to congratulate Asagi on winning 1st Prize at the Budapest Liszt Ferenc Competition in July and on being selected as one of the 14 pianists to participate in the 12th Liszt International Competition, Utrecht. Asagi’s website is https://www.asaginakatapianist.com/

Highlights from the 2018 and 2019 festivals

We videoed many of the excellent performances from the 2018 and 2019 festivals. Please go to the piano, string, singing and harp pages of the website to view these.

Background to the Festival

The North London Festival of Music, Speech and Drama takes place each year in the spring. The festival is highly regarded and was founded in 1920 by a group of eminent North London musicians, composers and educators including Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Charles Stanford and Dame Clara Butt. The Festival is dedicated to encouraging young musicians and actors by celebrating performance and helping them to nurture their creativity, develop excellent communication skills and build poise and confidence. Some go on to have a career in the arts; those taking a different path find these skills to be highly transferable.

With more than 200 competitions in over 15 different categories, the Festival champions the rich spectrum of the Arts, catering for children and adults at all ability levels. As well as a significant number of competitions for those of school age, the Festival encourages older learners or returners to discover the fun and benefits of active participation in music making. It also runs a series of highly respected Elite competitions for conservatoire students which are essential stepping stones to competing in international competitions.

Our Festival Competitions are open to amateurs and students whatever their age or ability. Entrants are given the opportunity to perform in front of an audience and may win a cash prize, trophy or certificate. Everyone receives oral and written feedback from adjudicators who are all professionals in their fields as well as taking away with them a copy of the adjudicator’s written comments and a certificate of participation. Come and further your performance skills, learn from the adjudicators and your peers, and enjoy the stimulus of competition.

We warmly welcome audience members at all our competitions. To hear news of the festival, sign up to our mailing list by emailing – enq@northlondonfestival.org.uk

In 2020, we plan to run the festival ran from Monday 2nd March to Monday 25th May with a break over Easter from Saturday 4th to Wednesday 15th April and a later break from Wednesday 20th May to Saturday 23rd May.

For more information about the festival and its history, please  click on the History link in the footer of this page.

The syllabus for 2020 will be here when we have finished creating it.