| Biography | Samuel James Ching, known in the musical world as James Ching, was born on 19th April 1900 at 9 Liverpool Road, Thorton Heath, Croydon, Surrey. His father, also called Samuel James Ching, was a civil servant and his mother Alice was a teacher and a gifted pianist. She recognised that her son was also very musical and when he was seven years old she took him to play the piano to Henry Wood who was then a rising young conductor. He advised her to take her son to the Royal Academy of Music where he became the youngest junior student ever accepted by the Academy. He studied under Tobias Matthay, then one of its professors of piano. |