Steve Dummer is a conductor, clarinettist, educator and all-round enthusiast for participation in music-making at every level being equally at home working with professional, amateur and student musicians. He is the musical director of the Kidenza children’s concerts, founder and musical director of Talkestra, musical director of COMA Sussex, conductor of Ensemble Reza’s Community Orchestra and pianist, clarinettist, saxophonist and singer with the great Speakeasy Revival Orchestra.

He is heavily involved in education work in the United Kingdom and abroad running courses and workshops for schools and adults in performance and composition including being a regular tutor director of the Junior Course of the European Youth Summer Music and working with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra on their ‘Rusty Musicians’ orchestra. Recent work abroad has included the Sri Lanka Youth Summer Camp and regular trips to Nairobi, conducting the Nairobi Orchestra (the most recent including a performance of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with the HSO’s own Rachel Ellis).

As a clarinettist, he gives regular recitals and concerts throughout the UK and abroad and has given world premières of music written for him by many composers including Peter Copley, Paul Carr, Alison Kay, Ric Graebner, Barry Mills and Patrick Harrex and also first British performances of music by Gerald Busby, Matthew Hindson, Derek Bermel, Frederick Rzewski and Paul Lewis. Recent performances have included Domaines by Pierre Boulez as part of a 90th birthday concert for the composer. He was a member of the zany jazz band Itchy Feet and played regularly with Juan Martin’s Flamenco Group featuring on the much-admired CD ‘Musica Alhambra’.

Steve has been the conductor of the HSO since 2006 but has had a long association with the orchestra, including being a member of the clarinet section as a schoolboy in the 1980s.