Director of Music

From a musical family, Huw was packed off to piano lessons and encouraged to perform from an early age. His first experience of brass instruments came when a new lodger arrived with both a French horn and a bugle and it was the latter that particularly caught Huw’s attention. Once at secondary school in Oxfordshire, he took up the trumpet seriously, playing in youth orchestras and big bands and fronting his own jazz band. He was offered a position as solo cornet in the Royal Marines Band Service at the age of 16, and left school in order to join.

At the Royal Marines School of Music in Deal, Kent, Huw studied cornet with Prof. Sydney Rose for two years and was awarded the Prince’s Badge for best musician under training before being posted to the Plymouth band in 1996. The next five years were a blur of foreign travel, high profile concerts and recordings, with the band at an all time peak due to a succession of excellent directors and a wealth of talent within the band. Huw somehow managed to find time to study for a degree during this period, graduating in 2001 having sat his finals under canvas in the Omani desert.



In 2002 Huw was drafted to the Royal Marines School of Music, now in Portsmouth, to the post of solo cornet instructor. He held this post for four years before being selected for the Bandmasters class in 2006, on completion of which he was awarded an LRSM (distinction) in band direction. After a further year in Plymouth Band, He was posted back to Higher Training as Academic Instructor. In 2009 he was successful at the Admiralty Interview Board and was subsequently selected for commission. He recently completed initial officer training at Commando Training Centre Royal Marines and is now both Recruit Troop Commander at the Royal Marines School of Music and Director of Music CTCRM Band.



Huw lives in Emsworth with his wife Rebecca and their two young children