Trevor Ford

Trevor initially trained to be a chartered accountant, leaving the accountancy profession to study flute at the Royal Academy of Music, where he gained the Academy’s Recital Diploma. For nearly 40 years, he worked as a freelance orchestral musician, performing with numerous UK orchestras including a long period as a member of the Orchestra of English National Ballet. In 1980, he accepted the position of orchestral manager with the English Sinfonia, subsequently becoming one of London’s most successful ‘fixers’. Trevor is now general manager of the English Festival Orchestra, which he founded in 1984. The orchestra appears has appeared at major venues throughout the UK, and has particular associations with the ‘From Scratch’ massed choral events at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Trevor has worked for a numerous recording, television and film companies, providing musicians for backing tracks, signature tunes, library music, and TV and feature films. In the 1980s and 1990s, his regular contracts with Stiff, Island and Virgin Records led to recording sessions with such artists as Madness, ABC, The Style Council and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. In more recent years, he has become involved in concert and event promotion in venues as far away as China and the Caribbean.

Alongside his work within the orchestral profession, Trevor Ford runs an accountancy practice which, at one time, handled the tax affairs of nearly 400 freelance musicians. He lectures on finance and careers guidance at music colleges throughout the UK, and is a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Trevor has also worked as a writer and editor. In 1986, at the invitation of Rhinegold Publishing, he devised and edited The Musician’s Handbook, a reference work which, through three editions, established itself as a major source of information on all aspects of the music profession. He also edited Rhinegold’s The Art of Auditioning, and was, for ten years, editor of Church Music Quarterly for the Royal School of Church Music.

In addition, Trevor works as a freelance choral director, having recently retired after seventeen years as Director of Music at a major north London church.

Trevor Ford’s wide experience in both the performing and administrative areas of the music profession has made him a much sought-after member of professional bodies and committees. He has served on the boards of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, the Association of British Orchestras, the National Centre for Orchestral Studies, the Royal College of Organists, the Royal School of Church Music, Newham Music Trust and London Youth Choir, of which he was the first chairman.

Trevor Ford was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 1992, an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Organists in 2001, an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Music in 2008, and a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music in 2010. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

In what little spare time he has, Trevor researches into Chinese porcelain, of which he owns an internationally-recognised collection, and chairs a charity in the Cotswolds which is dedicated to preserving the historic mills of the woollen cloth industry.