Introducing Katherine Stonham!

We are delighted that for our forthcoming performance, Engineering and Inventions: A Passenger Seats Concert, we will be joined by conductor Katherine Stonham for the first time!

Originally from Trowbridge, Wiltshire, Katherine is a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music and the University of Manchester, where she studied violin with Julia Hanson and conducting with Robert Guy. She was awarded the GRNCM diploma in July 2021. 

Katherine is principal conductor of the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra, a position she started in 2022. She also works regularly as a guest conductor with many orchestras and other ensembles across England and Wales. Since September 2023 she has been the conducting tutor for South West Music School and South West Youth Orchestra, and in July 2021, Katherine conducted three performances of Jonathan Dove's community opera The Enchanted Pig at the Buxton International Festival.

This will be Katherine's first "Passenger Seats" concert - where audience members can sit amongst the orchestra. She says about the concert:

"It has been a delight to work with the Hallam Sinfonia on such a varied and exciting programme. Haydn and Mendelssohn are composers whose music I have known and loved for many years, so I am really looking forward to conducting pieces by them in this concert. It has also been wonderful to discover the music of Augusta Holmès - her tone poem Andromeda is hugely dramatic and descriptive, and great fun to play. Alongside this we also have the avant-garde of Pacific 231, the popular light music style of the Dambusters March and Coronation Scot, and the brassiness of Time Forward - a perfect mix of styles that will provide something for everyone to enjoy listening to!"

The full programme is as follows:

• Felix Mendelssohn - Overture, Nocturne and Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream

• Augusta Holmès - Andromeda

• Arthur Honegger - Pacific 231

• Georgy Sviridov - Time, Forward! (film score excerpts)

• Joseph Haydn - Symphony no. 101 (Clock), 2nd movement

• Vivian Ellis - Coronation Scot

• Eric Coates - Dambusters March

"Engineering and Inventions: A Passenger Seats Concert" is at Firth Hall, University of Sheffield, on Saturday 28 February 2026. The concert begins at the earlier than usual time of 7.00pm (so it is easier for children to attend), and doors open at 6.30pm. Further information and tickets are available here.