Many English music devotees will be familiar with that iconic photo of Edward Elgar, probably among the last of him ever taken, outside Hereford Cathedral during the Three Choirs Festival (TCF) in 1933. There he is, sat centrally, surrounded by the directors of music of each of the Three Counties: Ivor Atkins, Percy Hull and Herbert Sumsion.

It was this photo that first captured my imagination of Elgar, English music and his contemporaries – looking at an icon, surrounded by church music legends of the future. So much of the English choral music we love has roots in the West Midlands and South West, but how does the festival still speak to people today, and what are its plans for thriving long into the future?

At last year’s 2024 Festival in Worcester, it was announced that David Francis would take over from Alexis Paterson as the festival’s CEO. Francis was not a name immediately recognisable to those in the English choral scene, having spent the best part of a decade in Australia holding management roles in ensembles and festivals and latterly as CEO of the Wollongong Conservatorium of Music.

But his UK links are strong. Prior to moving to Australia, Francis helped to launch the PRS For Music Foundation – the UK’s largest independent funder for new music in any genre, and spent five years at Dartington Hall Trust as Director of Arts. A few years ago, Francis lost both his mother and sister in quick succession and was looking to move back to the UK to be closer to his elderly father. ‘When I thought about what job I’d come back for, the Three Choirs Festival was the first thing that came to mind.’

It just so happened that previous CEO Paterson had decided to move on to support the launch of Oxford University’s Schwarzman Centre, and so Francis went for the job. When we speak, there’s a distinct element of coming home for Francis moving into the position: ‘I studied singing at Guildhall. I was brought up in a church-going family where we were all part of the church choir. So singing is my thing – that’s my world.’

The Three Choirs Festival laid its roots back in the early 18th century with informal annual musical gatherings between the three cathedrals of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester, before in 1838 it was first named the ‘Three Choirs Festival’. Over its 300-year history, it has hosted the premieres of works by a roll-call of major English composers, including Edward Elgar, Ethel Smyth, Ralph Vaughan Williams and, more recently, Judith Weir, James MacMillan, and Cheryl Frances Hoad.

Community events including a festival bandstand give local performers a chance to be heard

It now boasts a partnership with the Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as offering multiple singing opportunities for all ages and standards, from its eponymous ‘Festival Chorus’ to the un-auditioned ‘Festival Voices’ and ‘Youth Choir’. Its community music-making, too, sees bandstand performances in the Cathedral Close and numerous schools’ participation projects, sending expert practitioners into primary and secondary schools.

But at its heart has been the centrality of the liturgy, with the opening Festival Eucharist and daily services of Choral Evensong, which remain of importance to Francis: ‘The cathedral settings are extraordinary,’ he says. ‘You still get to hear the most beautiful music in a sublime setting, but it isn’t a concert. I’m really comfortable that that sits at the heart of the festival, because that’s where it originated.’

Inheriting an already fully-formed programme for 2025, Francis frequently mentions the ‘real integrity’ with which Hereford Cathedral’s Director of Music Geraint Bowen has programmed. He also stresses the importance of storytelling in the festival’s programme: ‘We really need to tell those stories as to why people should come and experience this music. Why, actually, if they don’t come to hear it at Three Choirs, they probably won’t get to hear it.’

Speaking with Geraint Bowen about his longstanding involvement with the festival, he was immediately enthusiastic about Francis’s leadership: ‘He’s come in absolutely fizzing with loads of new ideas – he only arrived in October but seems to have been here for ages already! He’s certainly made a big impact on the festival since arriving.’

Bowen was first involved with TCF back between 1989 and 1994 when assistant organist at Hereford, and now since 2001 has been Organist and Director of Music. ‘When I came back in 2001 there was a new regime,’ Bowen remembers. ‘There had been a very long-standing triumvirate of my predecessor, Roy Massey, John Sanders in Gloucester and Donald Hunt in Worcester, who had been working together since the Seventies. In 2001, I was working with Adrian Lucas in Worcester and with Andrew Nethsingha who had just arrived in Gloucester. Looking back over that time, everything is the same, but everything is also completely different!’

What does planning look like when the festival is ‘at home’ for Bowen? ‘I’ll come up with a draft for the main evening concerts and I’ll first put it to my two colleagues in Worcester and Gloucester,’ he explains. ‘Then to our chief executive and our artistic planning manager. We’ll discuss things like the workload for the chorus and just how saleable it is. Once that’s agreed, the daytime programme is added to it to reflect any themes which are running through the festival.’

Edward Elgar (seated) with Ivor Atkins, Percy Hull and Herbert Sumsion 

One of the work’s Bowen is conducting is William Matthias’s This Worlde’s Joie in the opening evening concert on 26 July. ‘It’s something which we did at my first festival in 2003,’ Bowen tells me. ‘My father was a close friend of Matthias’s – when he used to come up from Bangor to London for meetings he’d stay with us.

‘It’s a very exciting cantata, with a mix of sacred and secular texts,’ he says of the work. ‘It’s absolutely tailor-made for the Three Choirs Festival – it’s got a huge orchestral score with really colourful writing for percussion in particular, then the orchestra, big chorus, but also a part for children’s choir.’

Both Bowen and Francis point to Richard Blackford’s work The Black Lake as a 2025 Festival highlight: ‘I think this is a work which defies pigeonholing,’ says Bowen. ‘It’s cross-genre, because it’s got two narrators in it, as well as a soprano soloist, and again, a prominent part for chorus. I found it hugely attractive listening to it for the first time.’

‘I was very excited about the Richard Blackford when I arrived,’ Francis also enthused. ‘I feel so lucky just coming in at the point where the piece is written. Being able to hear a demo of it over at Nimbus in Monmouth, to listen to it and have that first response has been wonderful.’

Another notable moment in the 2025 Festival will be the performance of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s sacred cantata The Atonement in celebration of the composer’s 150th anniversary. This was a work commissioned by the festival in 1903, with a libretto by local writer Alice Parsons, but rarely heard since. ‘The Atonement was the fourth and last of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Three Choirs commissions and also his last appearance at the festival, as he tragically died in 1912 at the young age of 37,’ says the festival’s archivist Simon Carpenter.

CEO David Francis 

‘Until this work, the careers of Coleridge-Taylor and Elgar were almost running in parallel. In fact, at the time of Coleridge-Taylor’s first festival commission in 1898 he was arguably the more established of the two. However, whereas Elgar’s career continued to flourish, Coleridge-Taylor didn’t manage to sustain his.’

For the festival’s future, Francis has plans to deepen the commissioning relationship between audiences and composers, as was more the case in Coleridge-Taylor and Elgar’s day: ‘We will be developing a cohort of composers, hopefully by 2026, who have a deeper relationship with the festival. Then there’s a relationship between an audience and a composer, as opposed to an audience and new music.

‘It has real integrity in terms of the way in which the festival had relationships with composers in the past,’ Francis continues. ‘Taking a cue from the past and asking how that might work in our contemporary context.’

Artistic director of 2025 Three Choirs Festival, Geraint Bowen

Talking about the organisation’s future and the ever-present question of funding, Francis is optimistic and references other thriving artistic institutions as his inspiration: ‘Again, looking back to the past, I’d like to initiate a group of “stewards” – people who donate funds to the organisation, but on the basis that they’re committed to core British music and to the survival of the festival long into the future … It’s a bit like John (Gilhooly) is doing at Wigmore Hall. We’ve been sustained by our community all this time and I believe it’s our community that is going to see us into the future.’

Is this wishful thinking? ‘It may be that the time comes when you know the context is appropriate for the Three Choirs Festival to receive statutory funding,’ Francis agrees. ‘That would be great. But I think at this point, we’re able to see a future without that – I think that’s healthy.’

Francis is aware of what the impact may be of the decline the country is seeing of singing in state schools, having seen himself the situation with music teaching in Australia. ‘In Australia, singing is not a huge activity in schools. This was really brought home to me when we started a youth choir in the Conservatorium that I was the CEO of. But getting the the young people to use their voices and sing out was a real struggle. Then I came over to the UK and happened to be in Swansea, where there was a Christmas concert of local school children who sang, “Mary, Did You Know?” – and they absolutely belted it out! There’s a fundamental difference.’

Heritage and the future of the festival appear to sit seamlessly alongside each other for Francis. It’s not a question of which, but of both. ‘I’m very happy to celebrate the heritage – that doesn’t mean that we’re stuck in the past. I love the challenge of thinking, “What does it look like on our watch”, and how are we going to make sure that it’s sustainable for the next 300 years?’

The Three Choirs Festival is at Hereford Cathedral 26 July – 2 August. 3choirs.org

This feature originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Choir & Organ – Subscribe today