John Preston Amis was a British broadcaster, classical music critic, music administrator, and writer. He was a frequent contributor for The Guardian and to BBC radio and television music programming.
Life and career
Born in Dulwich, London to a banking family, and a cousin of the novelist Kingsley Amis, Amis was educated at Dulwich College, where he began a lifelong friendship with his contemporary, Donald Swann. A serious bout of mastoiditis as a child left him deaf in his left ear. He began his career working in a bank for five and a half weeks before leaving to earn a living in music. Amis had a number of roles, including gramophone record salesman, and orchestra manager, before becoming a music critic, initially with The Scotsman in 1946. He was for several years manager for Sir Thomas Beecham, and also worked for the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1948, William Glock invited Amis to run a summer school for musicians at Bryanston School, Dorset. The summer school moved to Dartington in 1953. Amis remained administrative director until 1981, during which time he brought to the school a long line of international musicians, amongst them Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, and Sir Michael Tippett. Amis' short career as a tenor began with the role of Ishmael in the 1967 recording of Bernard Herrmann's cantataMoby-Dick. He made his operatic debut in 1990 as the Emperor in Turandot. Amis had started singing in earnest after 1959: in that year he attended Professor Frederick Husler's s singing class at Dartington 'just for fun', and was told not only that he had the makings of a Heldentenor, but that he ought togo to Germany to study. From the 1950s onwards, Amis became a regular contributor to BBC Radio's music output, and worked on BBC Television from 1961, producing and presenting documentaries, and introducing the BBC2 magazine programme Music Now. As a broadcaster, he is probably best known for his appearances as a team member, from 1974 to 1994, on the BBC Radio 4 panel show, My Music, also appearing in the television version. It was on this show that he disclosed an unexpected talent as a skilled siffleur. His own radio show on Radio 3 interviewed musicians and contemporary witnesses such as Sir Isaiah Berlin. For many years he wrote a column on music in The Tablet, England's best-known Catholic magazine. His friends in the music industry included Noel Mewton-Wood and Felix Aprahamian, for whom he wrote a tribute following Aprahamian's death in January 2005. He was also closely associated with Gerard Hoffnung and organized many of Hoffnung's concerts until the latter's death in 1959; he performed a comic duet from The Barber of Darmstadt with Owen Brannigan at the 1961 Hoffnung Festival. As a critic, Amis often came across contemporaries including Neville Cardus, Frank Howes, Scott Goddard and Richard Capell. Amis wrote a number of books, on his own Amiscellany imprint, with titles including My Music in London: 1945-2000. Amis spent much of his time giving talks and one-man shows, after dinner speeches and concert works. Amis was a patron of the Music Libraries Trust and the Tait Memorial Trust, and a vice-president of the Putney Music society. In June 1948, Amis married the violinist Olive Zorian, founder of the Zorian String Quartet. The marriage was dissolved in 1955 and Zorian died in 1965. He was survived by his partner for his last six years, Isla Baring OAM, Chairman of the Tait Memorial Trust of which he was a Patron. He once said that she gave him his "Indian summer". His funeral was held on 20 August 2013 at the Musicians' Church, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in London.
