About The London Phoenix Orchestra

Starting out as the Insurance Orchestra, the London Phoenix Orchestra was founded in 1924 by Harold Rawlinson to provide members of the insurance industry with an opportunity to meet regularly and enjoy playing music together. This fundamental enthusiasm for music and friendly ethos remains at the heart of the orchestra's purpose to this day. While the orchestra may have grown and changed over the years, we are proud to retain strong links to the insurance industry and provide its many workers with the chance to further their love of music.

The Insurance Orchestra (as it started life) soon established itself among the forefront of amateur orchestras and up to 1939 gave concerts in the Queen's Hall. In 1951, the then London County Council invited the orchestra to appear at the new Royal Festival Hall where it played for the first time on the 12th July 1951. for the next forty years or so, the Festival Hall and its smaller sister, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, were to be its regular concert venues.

When its original conductor, Harold Rawlinson, retired in 1969 the orchestra took the ambitious and inspired decision to appoint a professional conductor. The first of these, Maurice Miles, started the process of raising the playing standard of the orchestra and each of his successors has continued this process. the result of all this work has produced an orchestra where the best of amateur musicians can attend rehearsals in the knowledge that the resulting concert will be one notch better than the previous.

Under the baton of Levon Parikian the orchestra is now regarded as one of London's finest amateur orchestras. We give regular concerts at some of the capital's top venues including Sinfonia Smith Square and Cadogan Hall and have recently worked with prestigious soloists such as Andrew Marriner, former BBC Young Musician of the Year Rafal Zambrzycki-Payne and Tom Poster, Gold Medallist in the Scottish International Piano Competition. In late 2006, the orchestra's performance of Stuart Hancock's Bitter Suite was also broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of the Listen Up Festival. Bitter Suite was commissioned by the orchestra as part of its ongoing efforts to support talented young musicians at the start of their careers.

Today, a relaunched London Phoenix Orchestra, with the backing of its Corporate Members, intends to join them in their support for local charitable causes. This way, the orchestra properly returns to the insurance industry within its mandate as the Insurance Orchestral Society.

President - Reg Brown

Reg Brown is a Bachelor of Law. He obtained his Associateship of the Chartered Insurance Institute in 1964 and became a Fellow in 1967, is a Freeman of the City of London and a member of the Worshipful Company of Insurers.

He started his Insurance career in 1959 with the Reliance Fire and Accident and joined the FAI Insurance Group in 1966 becoming London branch manager in 1969. In 1976 he moved into Lloyd's, joining Frank Barber & Others as a specialist liability underwriter.

He was appointed Deputy Underwriter on the formation of Syndicate 702 in 1977 and in June 1984 was appointed Underwriter of the Syndicate. He stepped down as Underwriter in June 2000. Reg was also Director of Octavian Syndicate Management Limited (a Terra Nova Group company) and its successor company Markel Syndicate Management Ltd and Pool Reinsurance Limited.

He is a former Chairman of Lloyd's Underwriters' Non-Marine Association Limited and was a member of Lloyd's Regulatory Board in 1999 and 2000. He was President of the Insurance Institute of London for 1994/5 and served as Chairman of the Chartered Insurance Institute Examiners' Committee from 1995 to 1998. In October 1999 he was elected President of the Chartered Insurance Institute for the year to September 2000.

Now a Past President of the CII and former Chairman of its Nominations and Remuneration Committee, Past President of the British Insurance Law Association, a former director of Kiln Plc., Kiln Underwriting Ltd., PRI Group Plc., Professional Risks Insurance Ltd., MCIS Ltd., C J Coleman & Co. Ltd. and the Financial Services National Training Organisation.

Married with a daughter and son, Reg's other interests include deltiology, playing badminton, watching Arsenal, travel and spending weekends away with his wife, Shirley.

Conductor - Levon Parikian

Levon Parikian studied conducting with George Hurst and Ilya Musin. Since completing his studies, he has pursued a freelance conducting career, being hailed as a 'brilliant young conductor' by the Sunday Telegraph. He is much in demand as Guest Conductor with orchestras throughout Britain. He currently holds Principal Conductor posts with several other London-based orchestras and is Principal Conductor of the City of Oxford Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Rehearsal Orchestra. He works extensively with students and youth orchestras, including the Royal College of Music Junior Sinfonia, the National Youth Strings Academy, and Royal Holloway University of London, where he also teaches conducting.

Lev has invested substantial energy and passion in the London Phoenix Orchestra, setting ever-higher standards for us and already increasing the number of performances from three to five concerts each year. he also provides us with the vital artistic leadership to guide the Insurance Orchestral Society back to its former glory.

Lev lives in South London and his hobbies include sittin' on the dock of the bay, singin' in the rain, and puttin' on the ritz.

His website is www.levonparikian.co.uk

Leader – James Widden

James Widden studied at Newcastle and Sussex Universities, and then as a postgraduate at Trinity College of Music, under the tutelage of Nona Liddell on violin and Nic Pendlebury on viola.  Since graduating he has pursued a busy career on both violin and viola - he has performed with the BBC Philharmonic, Halle, Manchester Camerata and Philharmonia orchestras, at the BBC Proms with Endymion, and at Carnegie Hall with the London Sinfonietta. 

He has performed many times with the London Mozart Players, including tours of Spain and China.  He is leader of St Paul's Sinfonia, a chamber orchestra based in Greenwich, with whom he has also performed several concertos including Vivaldi's Four Seasons, the Violin Concertos by Beethoven, Kurt Weill and Bartók, and double concertos by Bach, Arnold and Brahms. He has been co-leader of Opera de Baugé in France, and is the leader of the orchestra for New Sussex Opera, with many productions including the recently-recorded The Travelling Companion by Stanford. Outside of music, his hobbies include buying far more books than he's ever likely to be able to read and watching snooker.