John Amis

John Amis
John Amis at a Critics' Circle luncheon, April 2010
Born	John Preston Amis (1922-06-17)17 June 1922 Dulwich, London
Died	1 August 2013(2013-08-01) (aged 91)
Occupation	Music critic
Nationality	British
Genre	Music criticism
Website
johnamismusic.blogspot.co.uk

John Preston Amis (17 June 1922 – 1 August 2013) was a British broadcaster, classical music critic, music administrator, and writer. He was a frequent contributor for The Guardian and to BBC radio and television music programming.

Born in Dulwich, London to a banking family, and a cousin of the novelist Kingsley Amis, Amis was educated at Dulwich College, where he began a lifelong friendship with his contemporary, Donald Swann. A serious bout of mastoiditis as a child left him deaf in his left ear. He began his career working in a bank for five and a half weeks before leaving to earn a living in music. Amis had a number of roles, including gramophone record salesman, and orchestra manager (at one point turning pages for Dame Myra Hess during the wartime concerts at the National Gallery.^[1]), before becoming a music critic, initially with The Scotsman in 1946. He was for several years manager for Sir Thomas Beecham, and also worked for the London Philharmonic Orchestra.^[2]

In 1948, William Glock invited Amis to run a summer school for musicians at Bryanston School, Dorset. The summer school moved to Dartington in 1953. Amis remained administrative director until 1981, during which time he brought to the school a long line of international musicians, amongst them Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, and Sir Michael Tippett.

Amis' short career as a tenor began with a minor role in the 1967 recording of Bernard Herrmann's cantata Moby-Dick. He made his operatic debut in 1990 as the Emperor in Turandot.^[3] Amis had started singing in earnest after 1959: in that year he attended Professor Frederick Husler's s singing class at Dartington 'just for fun', and was told not only that he had the makings of a Heldentenor, but that he ought to go to Germany to study.^[4]

From the 1950s onwards, Amis became a regular contributor to BBC Radio's music output, and worked on BBC Television from 1961, producing and presenting documentaries, and introducing the BBC2 magazine programme Music Now. As a broadcaster, he is probably best known for his appearances as a team member, from 1974 to 1994, on the BBC Radio 4 panel show, My Music, replacing David Franklin. It was on this show that he disclosed an unexpected talent as a skilled siffleur. His own radio show on Radio 3 interviewed musicians and contemporary witnesses such as Sir Isaiah Berlin.^[5] For many years he wrote a column on music in The Tablet, England's best-known Catholic magazine.

His friends in the music industry included Noel Mewton-Wood and Felix Aprahamian, for whom he wrote a tribute following Aprahamian's death in January 2005.^[6] He was also closely associated with Gerard Hoffnung and organized many of Hoffnung's concerts until the latter's death in 1959; he performed a comic duet from The Barber of Darmstadt with Owen Brannigan at the 1961 Hoffnung Festival.

Amis wrote a number of books, on his own Amiscellany imprint,^[7] with titles including My Music in London: 1945-2000. Amis spent much of his time giving talks and one-man shows, after dinner speeches and concert works.^[8] Amis was a patron of the Music Libraries Trust^[9] and the Tait Memorial Trust,^[10] and a vice-president of the Putney Music society.^[11]

In 1949, Amis married the violinist Olive Zorian, founder of the Zorian String Quartet. The marriage was dissolved in 1955 and Zorian died in 1965.^[12] He was survived by his partner for his last six years, Isla Baring OAM, Chairman of the Tait Memorial Trust of which he was a Patron.^[13] He once said that she gave him his "Indian summer".^[14] His funeral was held on 20 August 2013 at the Musicians' Church, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in London.

References

External links

• John Amis' official blog
• John Amis at the Internet Movie Database