Maldon Festival 2025 Programme
'500 Years of Music'
The 2025 Maldon Festival programme of events has something for everyone from Contemporary to Classical, Rock to Jazz.
Join us for magical evenings, afternoon sessions and more. Bookings can be made online or through Maldon Books.
The Festival opens with afternoon Blues at Hemlocks, evening with St Mary’s Choir at St Mary’s Church and Superheads Grunge Rock at Madison Heights.
This year’s festival theme is “500 years of music”, as we celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Palestrina. This Renaissance man developed a style of music that is still inspiring modern composers half a millennium later. It is fitting for this year’s Festival to showcase all the rich variety of music that has cascaded down the centuries since Palestrina’s music was first performed.
Tuesday & Wednesday, 8th & 9th July 2025
The Wizard of Oz
Join the Plume Academy Student for this performance of the classic Wizard of Oz
Thursday, 10th July 2025
Blondel Workshop
14:00-16:00
The Octagon, St Mary’s Church, Church Lane, Maldon, Essex CM9 5JB
Blondel bring you the sounds of their Medieval shawms, bagpipes and recorders, playing pieces from the 14th & 15th centuries including song and dance tunes. They’ll also talk about how the instruments work, how they are the same and how they are different from modern instruments that pupils might be more familiar and where and when music would have been heard in the Middle Ages. There might be a chance for some singing, body percussion work or dancing if time and space allow.
Blondel – Cover Story
19:00-22:00
St Mary’s Church, Church Lane, Maldon, Essex CM9 5JB
‘Cover Story’ tracks connections between people, places, texts and music. It follows the evolution of popular late medieval melodies across Europe as they are copied, rearranged and repurposed over years, and even decades.
Catchy dances and lyrical chansons, ingenious rounds and dazzling divisions by Machaut, Dufay, Wolkenstein, Bedyngham, Binchois, and many unnamed masters.
Inspired by the virtuosic wind players of the Middle Ages, Blondel bring you their signature rousing blend of shawms and bagpipes, and introspective mix of recorders.
Blondel Medieval & Renaissance wind band playing music from the 14th-16th centuries on shawms, bagpipes and recorders.
What makes a song leap across national boundaries and language barriers, slip from the secular to the ecclesiastic, and remain at the top of the charts for more than 70 years? We don’t have the formula, but we know why these pieces wedged themselves into the cultural background of medieval Europe. The music is fabulous.
Blondel is a Medieval and Renaissance wind band made up of Belinda Paul, Emily Baines and Lizzie Gutteridge. Like the virtuosic wind players of the Middle Ages, we enjoy pushing the limits of our technique, performing music that many might not expect to hear on loud wind instruments, without losing the subtleties of phrasing, mood and balance of the original. Blondel play shawms, recorders, bagpipes and other early wind instruments. It is easy to imagine how the bold tones of a shawm band cut across the hustle and bustle of dance and banquet halls, or even a city square. More surprising to modern ears is the joyful and sophisticated beauty that results from this uniquely blended sound.
Our past performances include concerts in the Cheltenham Festival (broadcast live by the BBC) Cambridge Early Music, Brighton Early Music Festival, King’s Lynn Festival, Medieval Music in the Dales, Beaminster Festival, Leeds International Medieval Congress, the Wimbledon International Music Festival, Totnes Early Music Society, Barnes Music Festival, Worcester Early Music Festival, and Colchester Early Music.
This year’s Cover Story concerts, and our forthcoming recording, are supported by grants from the Continuo Foundation and Angel Early Music.
Friday, 11th July 2025
Silent Movie Night
19:00-22:00
St Mary’s Church, Church Lane, Maldon, Essex CM9 5JB
Buster Keaton – “The General”
Jonathan P. Eyre is widely heralded for his creative and unique abilities in liturgical organ and silent film improvisation.
Concert appearances across the UK include Westminster Cathedral, Ely Cathedral, Truro Cathedral, Portsmouth Cathedral, Leeds Minster, among many others. He has been a featured artist for the Cinema Organ Society, and Viscount Classical Organs. Jonathan regularly plays recitals and services, and leads workshops in choir training, service playing, and organ improvisation.
He is Professor of Organ at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, where he teaches both repertoire and improvisation. Jonathan is also Chapel Organist for Trinity Laban based at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel, where he plays for weekly services, broadcasts, CD recordings and other special services.
From 2012−2016, he was Sub-Organist and Assistant Director of Music at Bradford Cathedral. You will find a number of his CDs available to purchase in the Cathedral Shop. Previously, he held posts at Willington Prep School (renowned for its boys’ choir), St Nicholas Church, Harpenden (where he founded the girls’ choir), and St Paul’s Church, Bedford.
Jonathan studied organ at the University of Sheffield with Neil Taylor, Andrew Fletcher, Gordon Stewart and Colin Walsh. He holds Fellowship and Choral Conducting diplomas from the Royal College of Organists and Trinity College London.
Saturday, 12th July
James Housego
14:00-17:00
St Mary’s Church, Church Lane, Maldon, Essex CM9 5JB
James Housego, from Maldon, is a pianist currently reading for his undergraduate degree in Piano Performance at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama (GSMD), studying with Caroline Palmer. He has performed across London and Essex as a soloist and as a Chamber Musician. In September 2025, He will begin his Master’s Degree in Collaborative Piano at GSMD
He is an experienced accompanist, having previously been organ scholar for St. Mary’s Maldon from the ages of 14 to 18, and works regularly with other instrumentalists and singers. He is also a highly capable soloist and tries to bring attention to composers of more obscure name.
Lee Probert
15:00-18:00
Hemlocks, 185 High Street, Maldon, CM9 5BU
Lee Warren Probert is a local musician who co-founded the Rock band “The Blue Sunset” before forming Maldon’s very own “Doll Set Tones”
He currently Lives in Suffolk and is the frontman and songwriter for the “Lee Live Trio” He also plays solo and as part of a duo called “Jess and the chords”
He’s been in and around the music scene coming on 30 years and is still putting on impressive performances.
He’s powerful rock vocal range and self-penned popular original songs always draw a crowd and guarantee a good night for music fans.
The Festival Close
St Mary’s Church, Church Lane, Maldon, Essex CM9 5JB
Join us as we close our festival for another year. With Kyson Point providing the music! Drinks will be available, meet the trustees, find out how you can support the festivals future.
Kyson Point is UK husband and wife duo Kelly and David Booth.Contemporary folk music inspired by the wide open Suffolk skies where Kelly and David live, the rugged Pennine hills of David’s High Peak roots, classic Laurel Canyon singer songwriters and the stories and moods found all around us in the natural world.
The name Kyson Point (taken from a beautiful location on the River Deben in Suffolk) is new, but Kelly and David’s music has been intertwined for some time. The couple released solo albums (Wave Machine and All My Days) in 2023 but they were very much joint efforts in all respects. From Folk East to Maverick festival, Live At Heart and Folk At Heart in Sweden or intimate sold out shows in their home county, they have fine-tuned their live set in recent years to strike the perfect emotional balance.
“…a staggeringly confident set… Kelly and David build incredible songs around the words…” (Fatea – reviewing Wave Machine)
“…one of the finest debuts you’ll hear in the folk meets Americana fields of music…” (Get Ready To Rock – reviewing Wave Machine)
“…an exquisite collection of modern folk songs… hugely satisfying… honest and unaffected… 5* ” (RnR – reviewing All My Days)
“By any measure, David is a master of song writing and a compelling singer…” (Irish Music Magazine – reviewing All My Days)
“Kelly’s songbird vocal beguiles with great depth of feeling…” (RnR – reviewing Wave Machine)
Thank you for your participation
Previous Festivals
2025 Spring Awakening
We relaunched the Maldon Festival in March 2025, with a fantastic evening of enjoying an evening of entertainment featuring Beethoven’s Spring Sonata, Noel Coward and more. Attendees can look forward to performances featuring former festival director, Colin Baldy, with James Davey on St Mary’s organ, Megan Hill on violin and James Housego on Piano.
2023 Coronation Celebrations
In 2023 the Festival adopted the theme of Coronation Celebrations. It featured contemporary artwork and historic music that has been used to celebrate past coronations, some of which was heard again in Westminster Cathedral in May 2023.
2022 The French Connection
In 2022 the musical world celebrates Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was born in 1872 exactly one hundred and fifty years previously. The Maldon Festival took this anniversary as an opportunity to explore the sources of inspiration that shaped the work of Vaughan Williams.