Welcome

The North London Festival of Music, Speech and Drama takes place each year in the spring. We offer a huge range of competitive classes covering Piano, Singing, Choirs, Orchestral and Chamber Groups, Composition, Stringed and Wind Instruments of all descriptions, Speech and Drama. We aim to offer something for everyone, but if you don’t find a class that suits you, do get in touch and we will try to create one especially for you.

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 takes 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.

In 2019, we plan to be running the festival from Monday 11th March to Saturday 25th May with a break over Easter from Saturday 6th to Monday 22nd April.

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Michael Keyte.

A graduate of Trinity College, London and an Associate of the Royal College of Music, Michael has been involved with the North London Festival in a variety of roles since he joined the Festival Council in 1983. He served as Chair for a period and latterly ran two of our prestigious elite events, the Emanuel Trophy Piano Competition and the Appelbe Piano Prize. We shall remember Michael’s substantial contribution to the Festival over the past 35 years with gratitude and affection, and we shall greatly miss his presence on the Board.

Adrian Pilbeam has retired as Chair and Trustee of the Festival after many years of service to the charity. He originally joined the Board ten years ago as Section Secretary for wind and vocal classes and took on the role of chair in 2015. We wish him many years of good health and flute playing.

On 25th May 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was introduced to give people more rights concerning their personal data held or used by organisations. To view our privacy policy please see the link to Data and Privacy Policies in the footer of this page.

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

Download the 2018 syllabus here.