Want more?Joyce Marks
Joyce played the double bass at school for a couple of years and then gave up for 45 years.
She bought her own bass after retiring and had 4 lessons to remind her what the strings were called (G, D, A and E in descending order). When she's practising her husband hums loudly. She's not sure whether he's humming along with the sounds or trying to drown them.
Ilona Morison
Ilona came late (very late actually) to the violin but earlier from France and earlier still from Hungary.
One of her life's certainties is that she will never (she repeats never) play like Kennedy. But what's the hell!
She enjoys capturing as many notes as possible per rehearsal.
Rebecca Zeman
My musical education really began in the Reading Youth Orchestra (RYO) which was also the training ground for Maestro Neville-Towle ('double bass 197-). The two most important skills to be learned were faking it (memorably during the Shostakovich 10th Symphony when the first violin section produced a dramatic silence by faking en masse), and counting bars rest. For those unfamiliar with music, a bar is a unit of musical time and the rest is the period of reprieve from the unremitting production of notes. These units were usually taken in the Rising Sun Pub opposite Reading Station, where the atmosphere was redolent of Afgan Coat and accessed without regard to drink- drive regulations in an open topped Mini Minor called Beatrice crammed with about 12 RYO members. I promise, I never knowingly inhaled.
Postgraduate musical education took a furher 20 years during which it was important never to touch or play with, a violin. I am therefore, as I see it perfectly qualified to be a full member of the RTO where the requirement is that you have a theoretical knowledge of music but have not practised for 20 years. To be a class 1 member of the RTO however, you have to be out of practice on several different instruments simultaneously (eg Sandy Mc Call Smith). I am therefore a class 2 member.