The Deal Summer Music Festival was founded in 1982 by the Swedish pianist Lennart Rabes, who had moved to Deal from London in 1978. He inaugurated the first festival himself with an adventurous piano recital containing several premières of contemporary Swedish works, and Evelyn Rothwell and Steven Isserlis gave oboe and cello masterclasses. In 1984, Lennart Rabes returned to Sweden and Roger Raphael took over as Artistic Director, to be succeeded by Steven Isserlis from 1985 to 1986 and Peter Evans from 1987 to 1988. Meanwhile the Festival had taken root and begun to grow and flourish.
When in 1985 David Matthews began to spend some of his life in a small house near the sea in the old part of Deal, he was struck by the town's resemblance to Aldeburgh, where in the late 1960s he had worked as an assistant to Benjamin Britten. So when in 1989 he was invited to become Artistic Director, his model for Deal was the Aldeburgh Festival as he had seen it in the last years before the opening of the Maltings transformed it into a much more ambitious event; and even more, his knowledge of how the Aldeburgh Festival had started, with chamber concerts by Britten's friends. It gave him much pleasure to be able to invite many of his own musician friends to give concerts in Deal to delight the steadily expanding audiences. After 10 years he stepped down to make way for another Musical Director, Paul Max Edlin.
Now re-named Deal Festival of Music and the Arts, for two weeks at the beginning of July the programme which, as always, is centred on chamber music, is now tightly packed with as wide a range of music as possible, including opera and street music. There are also festival club events, talks, art exhibitions and education projects. In recent years the festival has seen the programming of much 20th-century music - particularly music by living British composers, and performances by some of the best young performers to emerge from UK and European conservatoires. Young people from local schools participate in the festival’s work experience programme, while all school children and students are offered free tickets to most events.
The venues include the Town Hall and the Landmark Centre in the High Street, and local churches in Deal, Walmer and Sandwich – in particular the splendid 18th-century Deal Civic Church of St George. A major outreach event is the Dover Youth Arts Festival, to be inaugurated in 2007 - the festival’s 25th anniversary year. Deal Festival of Music and the Arts goes from strength to strength, not only as an arts festival for the people of Deal and the surrounding rural area, but also for those who, increasingly, travel some distance to enjoy the variety of events on offer at festival time in this historic sea-side town.