John Amis

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John Preston Amis (born June 17, 1922), is a broadcaster, classical music critic, music administrator, and writer. He writes for The Guardian and has been a frequent contributor to BBC radio and television music programming.

Born in Dulwich, London in 1922, he is the cousin of the novelist Kingsley Amis. He 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 (at one point turning pages for Dame Myra Hess^[1]), before becoming a music critic, initially with The Scotsman in 1946. He was for several years manager for Sir Thomas Beecham.

In 1948 Sir William Glock invited him to run the a summer school for musicians at Bryanston public school. 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 Hindemith, Stravinsky, and Tippett.

Amis' short career as a tenor began with a minor role in the 1967 recording of Herrmann's cantata Moby-Dick, and following this he made his operatic debut in 1990 as the Emperor in Turandot. ^[2]

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, replacing David Franklin. His own radio show on Radio 3 interviewed musicians and contemporary witnesses such as Isaiah Berlin.^[3]

His friends in the music industry included Donald Swann, Noel Mewton-Wood and Felix Aprahamian, for whom he wrote a tribute following Aprahamian's death in January 2005.^[4] He was also closely associated with Gerard Hoffnung and organized many of Hoffnung's concerts until the latter's untimely death in 1959.

In 1949, he married the violinist Olive Zorian. The marriage was dissolved in 1955 and Zorian died in 1959.

He has written a number of books, on his own Amiscellany label,^[5] with titles including My Music in London: 1945-2000. Amis spends much of his time giving talks and one-man shows, after dinner speeches and concert works.^[6] Amis is a patron of the Music Libraries Trust,^[7] and vice-president of the Putney Music society.^[8]