Ailsa's Blog: Meet Our Members: Jonathan

I don't remember learning to read music. I was in the Church choir from a young age and learned the music along with the words. The choirmaster, Denis Carter, was a good and encouraging teacher and that started the whole thing off really. We would go off and sing at Southwark and St Pauls Cathedrals once or twice a year. By ten as well as singing I started hitting things and at 11 got my first proper drum and a tutor book! I learned recorder in Poplar Primary School and started learning clarinet and saxophone at Raynes Park Grammar School. By the fourth form I was house music captain! My school music teacher was the inspirational Dennis Aldersea who tirelessly encouraged us all. Age 14 he taught me the 'Oh Thou that Tellest' solo from Messiah having tea after school with his wife in his little flat then practising in his church St Mary‘s Wimbledon.

I was soon playing timpani and percussion with the Merton Youth Orchestra and was 'spotted' and started doing freelance orchestral gigs around London, mainly Saturday rehearse/perform but also Chelsea Opera Group under a rather youthful Roger Norrington and the Ernest Read orchestras based at The Royal Academy of Music. By seventeen I had played at Fairfield Halls, Festival and Royal Albert halls, and in Cambridge Guildhall and Oxford Town Hall.

So off I went to Bristol University and although not reading music spent most of my five years playing with the Bristol orchestras (which included a BBC orchestra in those days), Choral societies and also night club gigs with Nigel the organist!

It was a wrench going off to do the then day job and I was neither playing nor singing for a number of years. These were challenging times and the job and I eventually parted company and I went to live with my late Mother in Eastbourne.

I joined Sussex Brass Band (Hastings) as a percussionist and the technique quickly came back. I also worked at Bonners in Eastbourne building their first website in 1998/9. I am forever grateful for the skills I learned there as well as the support of Steve Hollamby and Graham Hall at Sussex Brass.

A busy freelance percussion and teaching career developed and became a very happy period of my life. After some twenty-five years playing and teaching I retired from that but kept developing my web design agency which had somewhat grown over the years.

Back at school and in the Church choir I had sung Messiah in every register as my voice changed. When my wife told me the Choral Society were doing Messiah coinciding with my stopping playing I asked if I might join and started brushing the dust off my vocal technique.

And here I am, happily singing with and supporting the society as best I can.