About NWIMF

Artistic Director

Annual Music Festival

The North Wales International Music Festival is a festival of primarily classical music held annually in September in St Asaph Cathedral, with its renowned superb acoustics.

The celebrated Welsh and Royal composer William Mathias founded the festival in 1972 and it is regarded as one of the cultural highlights of North Wales.

Festival’s aims

The festival’s aims are to foster the appreciation, understanding and enjoyment of classical music amongst as wide as possible a cross-section of the communities of North Wales. We provide people from all backgrounds and of all ages with the opportunity to experience live performances of different genres of classical music, given by performers of the highest quality, while further promoting the development of Welsh culture and music within the region.

Three main strands

Specifically, there are three main strands to the festival’s work: -

Outstanding concerts performed at St Asaph Cathedral, which demonstrate our exciting, creative ambition through the quality, calibre and international reputation of the artists we have performing.
High quality community outreach work, offering access to enjoyable and interactive live music performances some wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to experience.
Inspiring and inclusive cross-curricular education projects and musical workshops, for children of all ages throughout North Wales. We aim to make music more accessible for the youth in our community.

Every year we centre the Festival around a common theme, which links all strands of our work. This enables us to provide interesting and unusual perspectives, engagement with less familiar works, and offers an enriching musical experience for audience members, performing artists, and our project participants.

We regularly incorporate Welsh performers, always feature music by Welsh composers, and commission at least one new piece from a Welsh composer every year.

President: The Rt Revd Dr Gregory Cameron, Bishop of St Asaph
Vice-Presidents: Ann Atkinson, Trefor Jones CVO CBE, Prof John Last CBE, Claire Long, Dr Rhiannon Mathias, Prof Paul Mealor LVO CStJ