FAREWELL TO…
Bramwell Tovey Born 1953 Conductor
Bramwell Tovey enjoyed major careers on both sides of the Atlantic, holding a string of chief conductor posts, most recently at the BBC Concert and Rhode Island Philharmonic orchestras. Also a composer, he was ardently committed to bringing classical music to a wide audience, contributing to TV broadcasts and naming similarly minded conductors such as Leonard Bernstein and André Previn among his major inf luences.
Born in Ilford, Essex, Tovey played various instruments in local brass bands before winning a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London. His first posts as a professional conductor saw him work at London Festival Ballet before taking the reins at Scottish Ballet and Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet as, respectively, music director and principal conductor. It was in 1989 that he began his long association with Canada, when he was appointed music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 2001. This just overlapped with his long and successful spell at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, where he was music director from 2000-18. He was also music director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic from 2002-06 and principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra since 2018.
As a composer, Tovey’s work included The Inventor, premiered by Calgary Opera in 2011, and the score for the 2005 film Eighteen.
Richard Seal Born 1935 Organist, Choirmaster
As music director at Salisbury Cathedral, a position he enjoyed for over 30 years from 1967, Seal ruffled many a traditionalist’s feathers by introducing a girls choir in 1991. The move was revolutionary and ultimately sparked a sea change in the musical life of the Church of England. The Surrey-born choirmaster was a chorister at New College, Oxford, before doing his degree at Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar at Christ’s College. Before Salisbury, he served as assistant organist at Chichester Cathedral. He made a number of acclaimed recordings as both organist and choirmaster.
Also remembered…
The American musicologist Richard Taruskin (born 1945 ) will be forever remembered for his provocative viewpoint on classical music history, his prolific writings winning him both popularity and notoriety in equal measure.
The Los Angeles-born flautist Sheridon Stokes (born 1935 ), enjoyed a six-decade career in Hollywood studio orchestras and taught generations of young flute players at UCLA for some 45 years.