| Biography | James Gaddarn,(1925-2012), spent his working life in the service of classical music, particularly choral music. He was professor of vocal studies at Trinity College of Music in London (now the Trinity Laban conservatoire), where he taught for 35 years, launching numerous professional careers. Simultaneously, he was the music director of four amateur choral societies whose standards he raised to a level that enabled them to perform regularly with leading orchestras and international soloists. Several times he brought all four choirs together at the Royal Albert Hall or Fairfield Halls, Croydon a massed choir of 500 trained by one conductor.
His progression into music was by no means preordained. James was born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, the third child and only son of a farmer whose ancestors were shipbuilders. After Pembroke Dock grammar school, he was called up to the Royal Army Pay Corps in Leeds.
At home, fortunately as he recalled, his family would listen to Nellie Melba, Enrico Caruso and Clara Butt on a wind-up gramophone. In Leeds, he joined a male-voice choir, discovered a talent for accompaniment and was asked to play continuo in Bach's St Matthew Passion. There was no stopping his musical passion now. After the war his family expected him to be articled in law. Instead he went to Trinity, was taught by the influential Charles Kennedy Scott and never looked back.
In 1964, at Sir Malcolm Sargent's invitation, he became chorus master of the Royal Choral Society. His subsequent choirs were Ealing Choral Society (40 years), Croydon Philharmonic Society and Trinity College. His association with the London Orpheus Choir had begun in 1952 and ended in 2010 with Bach's Mass in B Minor, "the eighth wonder of the world" as he called it. |