Joint conductors
Starting from the 2018/19 season, the orchestra has appointed two conductors, who will prepare and conduct alternate concerts. This arrangement represents the wish of the orchestra's members for differing approaches to music-making.
Dwight Pile-Gray
Dwight began playing the French Horn at the age of 12. He took a performance degree at Trinity College of Music, where he received tuition from some of the country's finest horn tutors, and where he also studied conducting with Peter Stark and Gregory Rose. During this time Dwight performed with the Junge Europe Philharmonie in Germany, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. He also played with a number of opera companies at home and abroad and was a member of numerous ensembles, including a brass quintet, a woodwind quintet, and a horn, violin and piano trio.
On completion of his degree in 2005, Dwight joined the Corps of Army Music and, after graduating from the Royal Military School of Music, took up his first post with the Band of the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. After five years with the Band of the Scots Guards from 2012 he now serves with the Band of the Grenadier Guards whilst pursuing a varied freelance career performing, teaching, and playing in recitals with his ensemble the Apollo Wind Quintet. Dwight is a member of Chineke, the first BAME orchestra in Europe, and has performed with them all over the country including the BBC
Proms. He has worked with the BBC on a number of collaborations including on the Great British Orchestra challenge and worked with BBC Radio 3 as a consultant for music of Black composers. As well as being a horn teacher he is also now in demand as an adjudicator of music competitions.
In October 2018 he completed his Masters with distinction in Conducting at the London College of Music where he studied with Adrian Brown and Holly Mathieson. In January 2019 he will commence his PhD studies at the same college. Dwight is equally at home with symphonic wind band and orchestral repertoire. He joined St Giles Orchestra as one of two conductors in November 2018. He is also the conductor of The Old Barn Orchestral Society in Maidstone, Kent, and was the Musical Director of the Chalfont Wind Band in Buckinghamshire from 2010 to 2019.
Geoffrey Bushell
Geoffrey Bushell conducted St Giles Orchestra between 1983 and 2023. His first interests in classical music developed while a piano pupil of David Willison at Whitgift School. He has since studied conducting with Michael Rose, Adrian Leaper, Denise Ham and the late George Hurst at Canford - now Sherborne Summer School of Music, and is well known in Oxfordshire as a player of French horn and double bass, and as composer of mainly romantic style pieces ranging from small ensembles to large-scale symphonic works. Many of his pieces have been premiered by St Giles Orchestra. As well as significantly increasing the technical and musical standard of the Orchestra, Geoffrey is renowned for introducing players and audience to lesser-known and unjustly neglected repertoire. Geoffrey has now conducted over 400 different pieces with St Giles Orchestra.
In November 2009, Geoffrey celebrated conducting his 100th concert of St Giles Orchestra with a programme of his own choosing including rarely heard Swedish songs and Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. In 2013 Geoffrey celebrated 30 years as conductor of St Giles Orchestra, and in 2014 was presented with an antique baton on the 30th anniversary of his first concert.
In 2012, Geoffrey conducted the orchestra in a recording for a submission of a song by Johnny Martin to Pinewood Studios for the James Bond film Skyfall. Later the same year, Geoffrey conducted St Giles Orchestra in a recording in Christ Church Cathedral of Walton's Crown Imperial March which was broadcast on the BBC One Show as part of the Royal Jubilee celebrations.
In 2013, 2015 and 2017, Geoffrey prepared the orchestra and was an adjudicator in the Abingdon Music Festival's Maestro conducting masterclass competition, and later coached the winning conductors for their prizes - conducting a piece in a concert or rehearsal.
Geoffrey also regularly acts as deputy conductor for the orchestra and choir of Abingdon and District Musical Society. In 2018 Geoffrey and his wife Jackie set up the invitation-based Didcot Concert Orchestra – Didcot's first performing full-size symphony orchestra.
In 2019, Geoffrey made his conducting debut at The Sheldonian Orchestra, when St Giles Orchestra partnered with Wantage Choral Society and South Chiltern Choral Society in a performance of Elgar's "The Dream of Gerontius", with three professional soloists.
Geoffrey is also known worldwide for his website celebrating the Russian composer Reinhold Glière, and particularly his epic Third Symphony. Before the days of social media, this website had the delightfully unexpected effect of bringing together living relatives of the Glière family worldwide.
Since 2022, Geoffrey has been invited to conduct concerts with Aylesbury Vale Concert Orchestra in Aylesbury's Waterside Theatre, and Trinity Crinity Camerata in Bicester.
In November 2023, SGO members endorsed a committee decision for a new leadership model, and at that point, after 40 years and 150 concerts, Geoffrey resigned to pursue other conducting opportunities.
List of principal and joint conductors
| 2018-date | Dwight Pile-Gray |
| 1983-2023 | Geoffrey Bushell |
| 1982-1983 | Russell Humphries |
| 1980-1981 | Nicholas Hooper |
List of guest conductors
| 2020 | Israel Lai (Maestro winner) |
| 2019 | Maestro conducting masterclass (x8) |
| 2018 | Dexter Drown (Maestro winner) |
| 2017 | Gabrielle Damiani |
| 2017 | Maestro conducting masterclass (x8) |
| 2016 | James Anderson-Besant (Maestro winner) |
| 2015 | Maestro conducting masterclass (x8) |
| 2014 | Chris Nurse (Maestro winner) |
| 2013 | Maestro conducting masterclass (x8) |
| 2009 | Malcolm Harding |
| 2008 (x2) | Malcolm Harding |
| 2004 (x2) | Robert Legg |
| 2001 (x2) | Judy Martin |
| 1999 (x2) | Robert Webb |
| 1989 | Mervyn Keeble |
| 1988 | Sally Mears |
List of professional rehearsal guest conductors
| 2018 | Peter Selwyn |
| 2015 | Hilary Davan Wetton |
Joining