| Biography | Jack Mackintosh was born in Sunderland on September 22nd 1891 into a musical family, where his father conducted the Sunderland East End Prize Band. He was a more or less self-taught cornet player from the age of six years picking up a cornet fortuitously left lying around the house. He was educated at Barnes School, Sunderland and Scurrys College, Newcastle before taking his first professional engagement at the age of 15 at the Hamilton Picture House (later the Palace Theatre) in High Street West. Here he played to the silent films twice nightly and a matinee performance for 35 shillings a week. He caught rheumatic fever in 1907, which took one year of discipline and exercise to overcome. He joined Hetton Colliery at the Crystal Palace in 1912 and joined the front-row cornet section of St. Hildas lead by Arthur Laycock in 1913. Mackintosh joined Harton Colliery after they won at Belle Vue in 1919 and was their solo cornetist through to 1930. In the same year he was invited to join the BBC Symphony Orchestra and on retirement in 1952 his son Ian Mackintosh took his place in the trumpet section leaving Jack time to concentrate on teaching at the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall. |