Who We Are

Artistic Directors

Co-directed by Anthony Marwood and Richard Lester, the Peasmarsh Chamber Music Festival emerged from the acclaimed Florestan Festival, directed for fourteen years by the award-winning Florestan Trio.

Anthony Marwood, MBE (violin)

Anthony Marwood enjoys a wide ranging international career as soloist, director, and chamber musician, and has established relationships with orchestras and festivals throughout the world. He has performed concertos with many leading ensembles, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, London Philharmonic, Halle Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, Concerto Budapest and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Current engagements include return visits as soloist/director to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, concertos with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony and the Ulster Orchestras, a residency at the Adelaide Festival, a series of Wigmore Hall recitals in London, and engagements at a number of festivals in the USA, Australia and New Zealand. 

Many leading composers have written concertos for him, including Thomas Adès, Steven Mackey, Sally Beamish, and Samuel Carl Adams, and he has new concerto commissions from Christopher Cerrone and David Matthews. Anthony is a prolific recording artist, and has recorded 40 CDs for the Hyperion label, alongside many recordings for other labels. Current and future recording plans include an album with accordionist James Crabb for Orchid Classics, the concerto of Rudi van Dijk for Somm/BBCNOW and the Elgar Concerto for Signum. 

Anthony was the violinist of the Florestan Trio for sixteen years. He teaches masterclasses at the International Musicians’ Seminar at Prussia Cove, Cornwall, and also holds a part-time position at the Royal Academy of Music as William Lawes Chair of Chamber Music. 

Anthony won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award in 2006, and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s 2018 New Year Honours list. He plays a 1736 Carlo Bergonzi violin, kindly bought by a syndicate of purchasers, and a bow by Joseph René LaFleur. He lives in Peasmarsh, Sussex and part-time in Koringberg, South Africa, and is a citizen of the Netherlands as well as the UK.

Richard Lester (cello)

Chamber-musician, solo-cellist, orchestral principal and renowned teacher, Richard Lester was a member of the award-winning Florestan Trio, a founder-member of the ensemble Domus and was a member of Hausmusik and the London Haydn Quartet. He was principal cello with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and has been principal with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe since 1989. Currently, he is a member of the Gould Piano Trio.

He has performed as concerto soloist with, among others, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Camerata Salzburg, BBC Scottish SO, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra, under conductors including Claudio Abbado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sandor Vegh, Myung Whun Chung and Sir Roger Norrington. He has also appeared as director and soloist with COE, OAE, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Britten Sinfonia, Aurora and, in Montreal and Quebec, with Les Violons du Roy.

He has made over forty discs of chamber music, including the complete works of Mendelssohn for cello and piano, and a disc of Boccherini sonatas on period instruments.

Richard teaches at the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School in London. He gives masterclasses worldwide, and is a frequent guest teacher in Canada at the Banff Center and at Domaine Forget.

When not performing or teaching, Richard is happiest cooking, eating and drinking, preferably on a boat.

Sam Glazer (Workshop leader and young composers concert director)

Our education programme is led by the inspirational Sam Glazer.

Sam Glazer is a composer, cellist and creative leader. His work is based around co-creating new music alongside non-professionals, in education, community and healthcare settings. He has been leading the schools programme at Peasmarsh since 2006 and he also works locally with Create Music, Culture Shift, Barefoot Opera and Hastings International Piano.

Sam was co-creator of Spitalfields Music’s RPS-shortlisted ‘Musical Rumpus’ series of operas for babies and toddlers that toured internationally between 2012 – 2017. In 2022 he set up Seaglass Arts to continue this work. Their debut production, Catch a Sea Star, toured to Hamburg and Luxembourg in 2024. This year they received ACE funds to take the show to community venues across East Sussex ahead of a run at the Royal Opera House, London.

Sam is lead mentor for Spitalfields Music’s Trainee Music Leader programme, and in 2020 he was made Honorary Associate at the Royal Academy of Music, where he mentors young musicians who are studying Music in the Community. He has been involved for nearly 20 years with Wigmore Hall’s pioneering ‘Music for Life’ music and dementia project, and subsequently went on to co-found Raise Your Voice Opera, at Glyndebourne.

Board of Trustees

• Graham Dunning KC Chairman
• David Brierwood
• Vicky Dyer
• Richard Jennings
• Patricia Millett
• Deborah Rowland
• Julia Sebline

Festival Management

The Festival is managed by Anna Rowe, Festival Manager and Asst Festival Manager Hattie Garrard​, with considerable voluntary support from Sue Schlesinger, who manages the Festival Box Office, Eleanor Cranmer, who administers the Friends and Patrons scheme, and the Friends of Peasmarsh Church.

The Festival is also particularly grateful to the Vicars, Churchwardens and members of the respective Parochial Church Councils of the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Peasmarsh and St Mary the Virgin Church in Rye, the festival’s two principal venues.

All festival management enquiries should be directed to Anna Rowe at anna@peasmarshfestival.co.uk.

Registered company no 4625088 and registered charity no 1095978
Registered address: Landgate Chambers, Rye, East Sussex TN31 7LJ