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One of the articles in our regular newsletters are profiles of some of our players. These provide an biography of the player and their aspirations for the CPO. In a recent edition of the newsletter Ian Dewis talks to Phyllis Champion our 2nd Clarinet player.
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| Ian: When did you first take up music? |
| Phyllis: My only contact with music in my childhood was my family's gramophone with a huge papier mâché horn! But then our daughter Clare started learning the violin at school, and I thought what fun that seemed! There happened to be a clarinet lying around in the house and so I thought I would like to see if I could play it. I found a clarinet teacher in Cambridge and started having lessons not even knowing when dot went on which line! I had absolutely no musical knowledge at all up to then. |
| At that point, did you just have lessons, or did you start playing with others? |
| Two of us started at the same time - another mother on the violin, so as soon as we could play the most simple scale, we started playing duets together - just the big white notes! The music we made was awful - but we had a great time! So duets were part if it, right from the beginning. |
| How did that lead on to orchestral playing? |
| I suppose it was after five years or so. I joined a very basic orchestra indeed - 4 string players, 3 clarinets, 1 flute and a very enthusiastic conductor on a piano. He played his way through a Beethoven symphony and we joined in, rather hopefully. Perhaps orchestral playing is not the word for it! |
| And then did you move on to another orchestra? |
| Probably after about six months - I joined an evening class orchestra in Cambridge that took on as many players as applied and the woodwind outnumbered the strings. |
| So when did you join the C.P.O.? |
| It had been going for about a year, so it must have been about ten years ago. Andrea Quinn was conducting the orchestra at that time. I've been a member ever since, with huge enjoyment. |
| When did you take on its librarianship? |
| It was fairly soon - perhaps after two years. Chris Woodhouse's father Charles had been librarian when I joined and when he died I took over. |
| You continued to be the librarian until very recently, did you enjoy it? |
| I did, and very much, but it could be very hair-raising. A library could sometimes ring up and say: "sorry, we're not going to be able to get that music for you" much as they might do for a book that perhaps could arrive in six month's time and no-one would care. It took me some time to persuade them that music is needed to be there for the rehearsals, let alone the concert. It can be quite and alarming job at times. |
| I don't think everyone in the orchestra realises how far geographically the music sometimes has to come from. |
| You're absolutely right. I always started at the Cambridge library, and they would try and get it on "inter library loans". I should think that about one in three of the pieces we wanted were not in that system. Some pieces, of course, are still in copyright, and so have to come direct from the publisher - at huge expense! And some music simply hasn't got into the inter-library loans system - typically less usual pieces. In that case, I used to try other libraries like the Westminster Public Library, and one in Manchester, or the National Federation of Music Societies library. |
| Where else do you play? |
| I do a fair amount of orchestral playing because I own a bass clarinet and a basset horn - often amateur orchestras or choral societies want a bass clarinet or basset for a particular concert and I love doing it. But I do mainly chamber music - wind chamber music, wind and strings, and a lot of clarinet quartet and clarinet choir playing. And I go up to London once a month for lessons. |
| I believe you have a variety of instruments? |
| Yes, I own a small collection of clarinets - some classical, some 19th century instruments, and a larger range of modern ones from a huge contra-alto to a little A-flat. |
| So when did you move on from being the mother who played a clarinet "that was lying around the house" to playing this large range of instruments? |
| I went to a course at Benslow and somebody had a bass clarinet there and I fell completely in love with its sound - so I bought one. We also have a very keen group of clarinettists who meet at my house every Wednesday - about 14 of us - and for a big group like that you need a full range of different instruments in order to make a satisfactory sound from tiny little shrill instruments to great big mellow ones. |
| Has your interest moved on from making music with these various instruments to, say, studying the way the instruments have developed, their makers, and so on? |
| Very much so. I'm really interested in the history of the instruments, and therefore like to collect a few historical instruments. I also like finding out how the music and the instruments do actually suit each other - for example, there are some pieces that are written, say by Mozart who was very aware of the instrument, that are much easier on an instrument of his time. |
| And do you do a lot of researching? |
| Not an enormous amount. But I have one particular friend who is extremely well informed whom I go straight to if I have a query. Also, the clarinet quartet in which I play is coached regularly by Alan Hacker - he comes down to our house for the weekend - and his coaching includes a huge amount of information about the instruments as well as coaching of the pieces we plan to play in our next performance. I've learnt a lot from Alan. |
| So would you say that music dominates your life? |
| Definitely! |
| Does your husband Bob play? |
| Yes, he plays the flute. He started some ten years after I did, more or less at the time he retired. Bob shares his time more evenly between music and other things - music is just part of his life - not such a large part as mine. We do play together a certain amount in chamber music groups - mainly Baroque music for which I play the C-clarinet. He plays in various small chamber groups as well as the one with myself. |
| What was Bob's profession? |
| He was a consultant dermatologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital here in Cambridge. He retired about 10 years ago. |
| Do you like attending concerts as well? |
| Yes, and we particularly like going to the opera. We are lucky in that we get a lot of dress-rehearsal tickets for the ENO, which is great fun. |
| Were you a housewife when you were younger, or did you have a career? |
| Before I was married, I trained as an art historian. I worked in the "Museums Journal" as its assistant editor, and then I worked in an art gallery in Bedford. |
| And when you got married, did you give up work to have a family? |
| Yes. We have a daughter who is a mechanical engineer with Rolls Royce. We also had two sons, both of whom were born with a major handicapping disease. They survived only into their teens. That's why there is a gap in my "story" because it was a full-time job looking after our boys. We had some tremendous fun with them but it was always in the knowledge that their lives were to be limited - they died about ten years ago. That was a time of our life that gave us tremendous jot as well, of course, as tremendous pain. |
| The C.P.O. has recently celebrated its first ten years. How would you like to see it develop? |
| Over the years, the orchestra has grown in strength and numbers and our programmes have been increasingly ambitious. I am sure that we all hope to continue the progress we are making. |
| And what about our rehearsal format? |
| I like the current style of hard and concentrated work at rehearsals, but rehearsal attendance is a difficult one. I think we would get more benefit from our rehearsals if we had an additional Sunday rehearsal instead of the two weekday ones, but it's doubtful that people will be able to offer three Sundays, more or less in a row. The problem with the evening rehearsals is that we are tired and have a poor attendance, and so we don't really learn or work together so successfully as we do at our all-day rehearsals. If we do continue with evening rehearsals, I think it's important that we vary the evening of the week for each set of rehearsals. |
| And a final comment? |
| I think that the orchestra is an extremely friendly one. I've seen a significant improvement over those 10 years - the orchestra is playing far better as a group that it used to. We would all love to see larger audiences at our concerts, but how we do that, I just don't know! |
