Our Key People

Nick Austin - Music Director

Nick Austin is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he studied under Carola Grindea and Harold Dexter.

Nick has been Musical Director of Aylesbury Festival Choir since January 2017. Works performed include Mozart’s Sparrow Mass, Mendelssohn’s Lauda Sion, Brahms’ Requiem and Rutter’s The Sprig of Thyme. Under his direction, AFC have also performed concerts of Choral Classics, Operatic Choruses and Songs from the Shows.

Nick took up the baton at Amchor (Amersham & Chesham Bois Choral Society) in September 2018. His first concert was Mozart’s Requiem with the New Mozart Orchestra. Other major works performed since then have been...

Rowena Gibbons - Accompanist

Rowena Gibbons studied oboe (principally) and piano at Chetham's School of Music, Manchester and since the age of 16 has played for choirs, instrumentalists, singers, ballet schools and church services.

Currently Rowena is also accompanist to Thame Choral Society and Towcester Choral Society and in autumn 2021 took up her first Musical Directorship at Flitwick Singers.

Yearly she organises a choral concert as part of the Ulverston International Music Festival in Cumbria and on her home turf teaches and plays for the vast majority of Associated Board and Trinity exams for Milton Keynes Music Service.
David Lidington - President

David Lidington represented Aylesbury in the House of Commons from 1992 to 2019.

As Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster he served as deputy to Prime Minister Theresa May from January 2018 to July 2019, having previously served in the May governments as Leader of the House of Commons and as Justice Secretary.

David served as Minister for Europe throughout the coalition government and David Cameron’s Conservative government (2010-2016), the UK’s longest-serving holder of that post. He held responsibility...



Read more about David...
The Committee

Chair (and webmaster):         Mike Elliott
Secretary:                           Lynda Phipps
Treasurer:                           Lyn Williams
Membership Sec:                  Sheila Page
Music Librarian:                  Kate Atherton
Concert Manager:                Pat Aylett
Press & Publicity:                 Jean Tuer

...and read about some precious people who we have lost...