Saturday Morning Orchestra - Individualmembers

If you have news of individual members (past or present) that would be of interest to a wider readership, please contact the webmaster.

We are sorry to have to report that Harry died on Monday 19th November 2007. His good humour, as well as his violin playing, will be sadly missed

After a short delay Eleanor is hoping to rejoin her boat in Plymouth and then set sail for the Canary islands. If you want to contact her she is on e-mail at avanti@mailasail.com and she also has a blog at http://blog.mailasail.com/avanti.

Our congratulations go to Jon and Meredith on the birth of their daughter Bethia Sarah, on 18th October, weighing in at 8lbs 9oz. Further pictures will be found at

My enthusiastic initial decision to learn to play the violin came in the early seventies. My daughter, who is now a professional player and teacher, fell in love with music and playing the instrument at a very early age. I therefore spent a great deal of time ferrying her to lessons, courses, exams and orchestral rehearsals, as well as concerts. As I listened to more and more rehearsals, I knew without a doubt that I had to join in and sit inside the sounds and learn to contribute to the music. Therefore in my early forties I bought a violin from a lad who played in the Berkshire Youth Orchestra - not much of a pedigree instrument - but it was love at first sight for me. At home I eventually discovered how to extract a few first sounds if not music. My daughter did give me a few tips and hints but not lessons. Tuning up was a great challenge. I had been a pianist from childhood, so I was used to finding the notes always in the same place on the keyboard.. I taught myself from the outset but had to endure most excruciating sounds and squeaks. At that time I worked only in the mornings, so I practised every afternoon before the school run.. The greatest mystery was locating and playing in third position!

Eventually I plucked up enough courage to go to a weekend course in Caversham run by Brien Stait, my daughter's violin teacher. My abiding memory was the amazement and joy of actually sitting in an orchestra for the first time, even though most of the players were aged between 5 and 12 years old and their playing standard was far higher than mine. I sat on the back desk of the seconds and clearly remember Brien saying to me: “’Mrs. Williams, when you play in an orchestra, you must sit where you can see the conductor“ - quite a revelation. I loved every out-of-tune scale and note and hearing ’music’ around me, and I still find that exciting. I sat with an Australian girl, Wendy Dyson, who became my first music friend. Wendy was way ahead of my standard but we played together many times at her house, and then she told me she was going to play on Saturday mornings with a newly formed orchestra conducted by Raymond Jones. It was a small group of players, mostly beginners, or people who had learned as children and wanted to restart. What fun it was struggling to play easy David Stone arrangements! I learned such a lot about music and orchestral playing from Raymond, and this continued for many happy years. I still play with some of my original Saturday Morning friends, as well as the present day players, and I have grown with the orchestra and shared many happy times at Ufton Court weekends, which is still a lovely venue for music. There were only about a dozen musicians at the very first Ufton weekend - and it snowed!

More early memories of those times are of many summer school courses at Missenden Abbey, hearing the music from inside the orchestra with excellent players and attending master classes held by experts, a truly inspiring time for an amateur like me! I absorbed so much from more courses as far apart as Harlech and Wantage, a steep learning curve to sit with players and conductors who were unknown to me and discover new techniques and music.

My next musical moves came almost together, I joined Henley Symphony, then conducted by Marcus Dods, and the Windsor and Maidenhead orchestra, and I still play regularly with both groups. The excitement of learning a varied and huge repertoire with great conductors and really excellent players is always with me! I have had many varied experiences and adventures on European exchange visits, like playing the Eroica to a German audience in the Stadthalle in Bonn in a temperature of 90 degrees. One evening during a concert in a cathedral-sized church in Falaise in Normandy with Henley Symphony, all the lights went out. We had just started the slow movement of a Brahms' symphony and the music petered out in a downward fashion, followed after a while by pinpricks of light from cigarette lighters. With the WMSO in 1998 we played for the Queen and Prince Philip in the St. George's Hall in Windsor Castle to celebrate its re-opening after the fire. We were in the same place a few weeks ago playing for Prince Philip's Trust, and once again had a wonderful champagne party afterwards. Playing the Enigma Variations in such an English setting was a privilege and a delight. The other great trip was in 1992 to celebrate becoming European: we went on a week's tour in France, Belgium and West Germany, playing Verdi's Requiem six times before finishing the tour in Windsor.

Today my life is still full of wonderful music playing with other orchestras like the innovative Aldworth Philharmonic and Langtree Sinfonia. It is always educational and exciting and I enjoy rehearsing just as much as playing concerts. My other musical joy is to play chamber music with friends regularly, a new dimension which makes me feel that I have almost arrived and can be called a musician.

Thank you to inspiring conductors, many great and varied composers, and my fellow players. It is fun to be able to make music out of dots and squiggles on the page. See you all in September.

The suggestion from Antony that I should pen a few lines for his newsletter set me thinking about the place music has had in my life. It all began well before I was five years old with a fascination for the gramophone and how it reproduced sound. I recall my parents saying that before I could read, I could identify records from the collection. My own memory is of discs with distinctive labels (does anyone else remember a label with racing jockeys?), easy to associate with particular pieces. So, not very clever.

The musical diet was principally brass and military bands, but by eleven or twelve years of age, stimulated by school music talks and listening to the BBC, I became aware of the pleasure of orchestral music. A teacher at grammar school was an enthusiastic record collector (his brother Percy Wilson, was technical editor of the 'Gramophone' magazine)and he fostered my interest. His school office was dominated by an enormous EMG acoustic gramophone horn.

These were the early years of the war when there was an immense widening of interest in all aspects of the arts. Unfortunately by this time we no longer possessed a gramophone and in war-time conditions the prospects of acquiring one were not good. Then, a stroke of luck. The headmaster of my old elementary school offered me a HMV cabinet acoustic model. It was in excellent condition and I began to lay the foundations of my record collection. To acquire the right discs meant getting to know the repertoire and with the help of the BBC I kept a notebook, listing details of items heard and liked with a view to purchase. I made some 'howlers': Purcell went in as Persil to name but one. There was no time, opportunity or money to learn an instrument but I did favour the cello and French horn. Their mellow sound appeals still.

The war-time expansion of music audiences led to the founding of the Slough Philharmonic Orchestra and I became a regular attender at their concerts. Their first conductor was Lt-Col Miller, who was succeeded by a professional cellist, Herbert Withers. His wife, a small blonde lady, played the double bass, which almost hid her from view. My record library progressed through 78s to LPs (mono then stereo), tapes (reel and cassette) to the CDs of today. To Myrtle's eternal despair, I have them all still. All of this will help you to understand how I have enjoyed some success with answers to the Ufton quizzes.

I am not a singer but when still a boyish treble I used to sing to myself quite a lot. Once the voice broke I stopped altogether - until much later. In 1952, when playing the jester Feste in 'Twelfth Night', I was persuaded to sing his songs. Much later still, I took part in a series of light-hearted revues singing in musical sketches where comic verse was set to well-known opera or classical tunes. One role required me to appear in a frock as the office charlady. My singing career reached its peak (and ended) with my playing the poet Grosvenor in G&S's 'Patience'. I still couldn't read music but had a good ear and memory for music.

As retirement approached my thought turned to how I would occupy my time. Both Myrtle (piano) and Rufus (clarinet and piano) had musical skills but I had none. What was to be done? Myrtle came up with the idea of the double-bass and the fact that Tony Osborne (composer and bassist) taught the instrument locally. The idea of a mature student was put to Tony and an assessment session was arranged. Tony felt we could achieve something and so my music-making began.

It proved to be the right choice. Essential to the orchestral sound, bass players are welcome at almost any stage in their development and after two years study I was accepted into the ranks of the Langley College Orchestra, then under the direction of Nigel Wilkinson. This happened a couple of years before I actually retired.

On the closing of the Langley band, I moved on to the Chiltern Edge Orchestra, adding in due course the Saturday Morning and East Grinstead Chamber Orchestras. Playing is now a major activity and has brought me many new friends and experiences. When I began I had no idea that I would find myself being interviewed for the 'Late Learners' programme aired on Radio 4 a couple of years ago.

I owe much to the encouragement I have received on all sides but in particular to Tony Osborne for the skill, Peter Tyler (restorer) for finding me a fine instrument, and, not least, my wife Myrtle, who has tolerated my subterranean rumblings with remarkable forbearance. I hope to go on scraping for some time yet!

'The oldest boy I have ever known' said Alan Backhouse. Indeed Ron started playing the little E flat clarinet in the band as a boy and the experience served him well, for he never lost the capacity for charging into sight-reading a fast passage with a wild enthusiasm that I couldn't match. He never got himself an A clarinet so that he would often have to transpose down a semitone. At first he used laboriously to write the part out, bristling with sharps or obscured by double flats, but finally he could do it at sight, tirelessly practising to get it right. His articulation was idiosyncratic too. He didn't tongue to start a note, but 'glottal-stopped', K- K - K, contrary to the usual English teaching, for he had had lessons from an Italian in Nairobi, and I later learned that the barber Salvo in Reading did the same in his home town band of Taormina in Sicily.

What we all remember though of Ron is that for more than twenty-five years he was one of our most loyal members, always there first to switch on the urn, setting up the coffee with Russell and singing along with Ken old songs like Summertime. He had done a lot of serious singing too in local choirs, especially enjoying the pleasant and committed Pangborne group until he felt he looked too old behind the sopranos. He was always encouraging me in my playing but also, hearing me singing along in the orchestra, he had said I had a useful voice years before I was invited to join the Reading Phoenix Choir, so I shall always be grateful to him.

There was a packed chapel at the crematorium for his funeral on the 29^th March to support Jean and his daughter, Geraldine, whose partner, Keith Whyman spoke well and movingly of him. He described Ron as both 'a gentleman and a gentle man', not given to speak ill of anyone - except politicians - and furious only with offending digital equipment, wildly brandishing multiple remotes at the telly. After military service in the Royal Signals that took him to Malaya taking care of Japanese prisoners-of-war, he became a computer engineer with ICL and that gave him the ticket to travel to Cyprus and Africa. Libya was not much fun, but he did greatly enjoy Kenya, riding out on horseback through that wonderful landscape. At the crematorium Mozart's clarinet concerto, which he used to play with Shirley Cave at Ufton, seemed the right choice - 'like the cream on the coffee' wrote Jean and Geraldine afterwards.

After a year's class tuition at Primary, I was drafted into my Secondary orchestra to play Iolanthe in a well-established G & S tradition. On the bus to my first rehearsal I was greeted by the conductor with 'I see you play the gusunder'. I boldly told him it was a violin. 'Gusunder yer chin, don't it?' was the rejoinder. The shape of things to come! By reasonable standards it was about as far as I got. Sadly, with no formal tuition, 'look and learn' was the order of the day, but I went on with the G&S until 1938 - notably to repeat Iolanthe, but in the Firsts. The whole school was involved and we took South Parade Pier concert hall in Portsmouth for a week.

In the circumstances of the time I could scarcely have been more lucky. G&S was an education and not only musically, and the school was well equipped, with excellent help, to achieve good standards - and, of course, a built-in audience. For Friday lunchtime rehearsals three pence got you two penn'orth of chips and a Tizer. More importantly Sunday rehearsals with the principals were excellent for deeper appreciation. Has there ever been a better marriage of words and music?

The war more or less spelled 'finis' until further notice, but I took part in a few events which kept some minor skills alive. Moving to London in late '44 I joined a well-led group in Wood Green and took a few lessons, largely sight-reading, but sadly no serious studies. In 1946 I married an excellent pianist and soon after moved to Reading. By 1955 Adeline had joined the University Choral Society and encouraged me to join the orchestra under Dr Woodham. To my surprise I was accepted and stayed some four years until daily travelling to London made rehearsals impractical. I played on a few minor occasions, but managed to take lessons and Associated Board Grades 4 and 5 in the early nineties to encourage my ailing wife to get back into playing to accompany me, sadly to no avail. Currently I've got even more adept at playing occasional notes in the more demanding passages, and at times am grateful that I can find the place and follow the music!

My efforts on the guitar ran in parallel, with an able friend, from 1934, playing chords from dance music and learning chord symbols which led on to a few folk songs such a;

To me good jazz involves musical genius. The great Satchmo Armstrong, asked to define 'swing' replied 'If you ain't got it, I can't tell you'. I ain't got it but thrilled to the effort; of the Hot Club de Pans Quintette to the point where I joined a plectrum guitar club about 1937 which met weekly in a pub. To finish the evening we enjoyed Hot Club records over the pub speakers which told us how poor most of us were. I don't think Reinhardt and Grappelli have ever been bettered - and Django couldn't read a note!

The war spelled 'finis' to that as well but I eventually took some plectrum guitar lessons in London in the sixties and got as far as the Eddie Lang duets. Lang was a big rhythm section name in the thirties and moved on from banjo to guitar with new construction techniques. I enjoyed my efforts but had too poor a memory for musical detail to go far.

In the early seventies I acquired a modest but reasonable classical guitar (redundant from an exhibition) and later decided to 'have a go', taking lessons at the school started by John Williams' father, and eventually scraped by Board Grade 5. In 1977, a week after I retired, a friend asked me to take on some local students who had suddenly lost their teacher. I took on five and quite enjoyed it, and eventually developed a quite sizeable one-to-one teaching effort.

I found a tutor in Reading and finally made it to Grade 8. But it is one thing to get a respectable exam pass mark and quite another to repeat the work decently after six months - at least for me. But I've had my moments. I've managed Villa-Lobos' First Prelude (of five written for Segovia) in public, and played two Japanese folk songs arranged in our notation only to learn after that there was a Japanese lady in the audience. My chat included reference to the Japanese hard and soft scales, both of which have 6 steps and include a major third. The astonishing thing to me is that the hard scale relates readily to our major (to my ears) and the soft to our minor. It is beyond me to explain why.

Needless to say nobody has ever paid me for playing - and I shall get no fee for this! If by chance anyone wants a rebuilt 1938 Radiotone plectrum guitar in good playable condition they know where to come. Some folk would see it as a collectable classic.

Occasional piece: 'Air turned to stone' by Eleanor Tims (after 3 weeks in hospital)

I've never been in prison (and hope I never shall be!), but my recent experience in hospital made me think that prison could scarcely be worse. I'd been put in what amounted to solitary confinement: a single-occupancy isolation ward.

The experience was horrible. It wasn't the loneliness. After all, I'd had five years away on my little sailing boat, with many long periods of being alone. It was the silence. I could have been on the moon, so hermetically sealed, in a sound-proof way, was my room.

This made me forcefully realise how important in my life music was. The hospital did not allow one to have a radio, and I didn't feel cheerful enough to attempt to listen to the hospital's own radio offerings. I suddenly found the total lack of music to be unbearable. It made me think over my life and to realise what a huge part in my life music had always played.

I'd been brought up in a fairly intellectual home. My father's ideas of what was suitable entertainment for growing children was to take us to listen to lectures in halls large and small on all sorts of abstruse topics and, while all my school friends went to dances, I was sent to concerts, which in those days offered extremely cheap seats for school-children. Suited me! Our radio was always tuned to classical music; and often I would get out of bed and sit on the top stair in my nightie listening to some Handel or opera, or whatever my parents were enjoying. Playing the piano occupied much of my time; for throughout my teens I fondly imagined I would become a concert pianist, but that ambition down-sized itself to becoming a piano teacher. Then that ambition fizzled out when my mother asked me if I really fancied earning a meagre living teaching children in the afternoons, after school!

So I moved on; university brought many more opportunities to listen to music, as I was at Manchester, with the Halle close by and concerts in many other venues.

Gramophone records, tapes, radio - all provided a constant stream of music, but somehow pop songs, pop music just never even appeared on my horizons. Maybe a loss to me. I shall never know!

I didn't start playing the violin until I was in my 40's. It was a defence action really, on the 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em' principle, because it seemed as if John were always out playing his cello. One of the very best decisions I ever made in my life!

Marriage to John proved to be, as it were, marriage to a music library. His vast collection of records and tapes has changed to a collection of well over 2000 CDs and now that he has retired, music flows from his study, a river of harmonies pouring throughout the house, all day long.

But, suddenly, here I found myself, incarcerated through illness into a world of isolation, of total silence. This had never happened to me before. Even in mid-ocean, 1500 miles from land, 1 had plenty to listen to: the hiss of water along the hull, much like the hiss of snow beneath ones skis; the whisper of the wind in the sails. And when I wanted a more varied listening diet, I had some 200 CDs and tapes with me. But in hospital, there was nothing but silence and I found this very hard to deal with. It was as if the very air had turned to stone. It brought home to me the importance and the place of music in my life.

John rescued me by buying me Walkmans and bringing tapes and CDs. I fancied I'd turned into an elderly teenager, wearing my little ear-buds and enjoying hearing music pour into my ears as I paced round and round my tiny room, like a caged lion, trying to keep some strength in my legs.

I'm home again now, the house filled day-long, as ever, with music. I never before appreciated home so much! Mmm .... I might just actually consider staying home from now on, though I suspect that once I am really well again the lure of the sea will start tugging. You know the sort of thing: the slap of waves, the voice of the wind. Real music!

In 1917 when I was born television and radio had not arrived, so, apart from very distorted sounds from a wind-up gramophone, all music was live. Up to the age of eight years I lived a rather secluded life in the Dock Estate at Liverpool as my father was a Dock Master. Apart from hearing music in our home where my mother and eldest sister played the piano very well, the main source of music was the trio in the tearoom we visited when shopping in Liverpool. This gave me my interest in the violin. An uncle gave me a small one which I taught myself to play after a fashion, and my sister taught me to read music. This was fine, except that I played with my left wrist pushed up to the neck of the instrument and my right elbow pointing skywards.

When I was eight my father was promoted to Assistant Harbour Master and we moved to Wallasey, as he had to be close to the Birkenhead and Wallasey dock system so that he could take command in the event of a night-time fire or other emergency. This was a great improvement, as we now had easy access to the band in the park and all sorts of entertainment at the New Brighton Floral Pavilion.

At 10 years of age I started in the junior department of the local Grammar School and was soon adding to the noise of the percussion band. Someone must have suggested that lessons would be a good idea for, midway between school and home, there lived a middle-aged lady, Elsie Swift, who taught violin, piano and singing. She took me in hand and eventually cured most of the bad habits I had fallen into. It is not easy playing with a book between your side and your right elbow, but it worked.

Having moved into the senior school 1 joined the school orchestra and after a couple of years we had a new music master, Charles Cannon, MA MusBac LRAM FRCO. He was a brilliant musician. He had learned to play on a 'tracker' organ resulting in enormously strong hands and the ability to stretch 10ths. Very soon we had a really good grand piano in the school hall and also a Hammond organ. The range of music at the school was improved greatly and with the help of some members of the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, including the great trumpet player Harry Mortimer, we were able to perform some large works. Charles Cannon started a Sunday evening chamber music group which met at his home. We played everything from sonatas to quintets, from Haydn to Brahms, and this continued until 1939.

Returning to my teacher, Elsie Swift, she taught me enough to pass the Licentiate examination of the College of Violinists, a body which boasted that all its examiners were violinists. She promised that on her demise I was to have her Guarnerius violin. Sadly she did not put this in writing and her brothers were not prepared to part with it.

During the war I played with the Reading University Orchestra for a while, but I was only in Reading from March 1940 to July 1942. There was very little music then until I returned from India in 1946 when Barbara, our son Roger and I returned to Wallasey, and I was able to play music with my sisters.

In 1949 we came south again and in the middle 50s I joined the Basingstoke orchestra, eventually becoming leader. A change of job ended this in 1960 and there was virtually no music until 1977 when I joined the RSO and stayed until 1981, when once more I was unable to continue owing to my job.

About 12 years ago someone came to the door and asked whether I would be interested in playing violin and piano music with him. As he lived about 250yds away this was fine. I got my fiddle out of the cupboard and decided it needed some work done, and that the bow was rather short of hair. I looked in Yellow Pages and came up with the name of Raymond Jones. He did the necessary work and suggested that I might like to join the SMO, which I did.

In the late 1990s my pianist friend died and almost at once Cynthia Spoliar told me that John Ayres, who used to be my partner in the RSO, was unable to get to Woodcote as he had glaucoma and suggested that as we lived near one another I might be able to take him. This resulted in my joining the Langtree. At the beginning of 2004 I realised that evening rehearsals were too much for me, so I resigned. However I hope to be able to continue with the SMO for a little longer.

The fiddle I am still trying to play was purchased form a violin repairer close to the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool about 75 years ago and cost £15.00 complete with bow and case. It is German factory made circa 1890.

We are sorry to be saying goodbye to Shirley after many years of playing with the orchestra and also being the originator of this website. She will we be missed by all and we hope to see her from time to time at Ufton.

We received the following from Colin and Janet after their wedding in the Autumn of 2004

Nearly three months have gone by since our lovely wedding day and we haven't got round to acknowledging many of the greetings we received. Yours was the first card to arrive - we were touched to read so many signatures of friends who have meant so much to me, Janet, particularly. Many of you will agree that this orchestra has always been like a large family. Not only do we share music together, but so often there has been opportunity to support each other in family joys and sorrows. I have experienced much of this since the late 1970s when Andrew and I first came to the orchestra. Thank you for that and for your recent acknowledgment of another phase in our lives. We are very happy but still not sure where we will end up! Keep playing and enjoying Saturday mornings.