Where Are They Now? Summer 2013
The Trombonist
Reflections on Retirement by John Iveson
Cumbria, the Lake District, is one of the most beautiful and delightful parts of the country in which to live, and it is to here that my wife Mary and I decided to retire, probably because both being native Lancastrians it felt rather like returning home - this part of South Cumbria was originally part of Lancashire, after all. If there is a downside, however, it is that Cumbria is something of a cultural backwater, so as well as the dearth of live musical performances of the quality enjoyed in the South East, musical news tends to travel very slowly, particularly news of my erstwhile colleagues in the profession. As a result, news is often very old by the time it reaches me, and sadly the first page I usually turn to in the Musicians Union magazine is the obituaries! I retired from orchestral playing in 1991, and my decision to retire at the relatively young age of 47 certainly raised a few eyebrows amongst my colleagues. I had, however, made a conscious decision many years previously to retire from playing whilst I was still enjoying it, and before any obvious deterioration in my playing forced my hand. Also, I wanted to allow some time to explore other musical avenues and to see if there was indeed life beyond the trombone. Having begun my career at the tender age of 19 in the BBCSO (I only applied for the job to gain some audition experience!) over the intervening years I had enjoyed a very fulfilling career, covering the whole gamut - symphonic, chamber music with the PJBE, freelance session work, and, after 11 years at the Royal Opera House, decided the time was right to call it a day. My final Nutcracker at the ROH was perhaps not my finest hour - the period between the matinee and the evening show had been spent saying goodbye to one and all in the time-honoured fashion in the Marquess of Anglesey! Anyway, having recovered from that embarrassment I beat a hasty retreat from London, moving to Wiltshire to take up the post of Head of Wind and Brass at Marlborough College. Teaching has always been close to my heart, having been professor of trombone at the RCM since 1967, and the job at Marlborough gave me valuable experience of teaching school-age students as opposed to undergraduates. Enjoyable as the work at Marlborough was, nonetheless the experience persuaded
me that this was probably not quite how I wanted to spend what professional years were left to me; I had meanwhile completed the training for the Associated Board (now known as ABRSM) and in 1996 embarked on what proved to be one of the most physically and mentally demanding jobs in music - that of an ABRSM examiner, travelling the length and breadth of the UK and internationally. Examiners can be based anywhere, so Mary and I now took the opportunity to relocate back home to the North West. I finally retired from this work last year after 16 years in the field, but still continue to write and arrange brass music, and conduct a local brass band - Flookburgh Band. This wonderful group of dedicated amateurs, many of them Morecambe Bay fishermen, have provided me with more enjoyment and satisfaction than I could possibly have imagined - real, committed music making. Looking back across the years, I have often wondered whether it was necessarily such a good thing to have begun my playing career at such a young age, right at the pinnacle of the London scene. Certainly it was a baptism of fire; within a few months I had dealt with everything the BBCSO repertoire could throw at me, and more! The personnel list of the BBCSO in 1965 was a ‘who’s who?’ of great musicians who, only a year or two earlier were players whom I had idolised only from the back of record sleeves. Names such as Jack Brymer,
Alfred Flaszinsky, Sydney Sutcliffe, Hugh Maguire and Alan Civil were now officially my colleagues. To sit behind the late, great Alan Civil’s bell on the Festival Hall stage as he took hold of a Mahler symphony by the scruff of the neck and showed it who was boss, was an experience I will never forget; to then share a few pints with him in the pub afterwards was just the icing on the cake! I was also privileged to meet many legendary names from the older generation of trombonists - Sydney Langston, Stanley Brown, George Maxted, Frank Stead, Tony Thorpe, Tony (‘Matey’) Moore, to name a few - gentlemen all, and very generous and welcoming to this young upstart! So, what do I miss? Definitely the buzz and excitement of the big performance, and that special camaraderie which I am sure is unique to British orchestral musicians and brass players particularly. Certainly I am relieved to be free from that gutwrenching anxiety, which often presaged an important performance, and from which few players are immune - and I was certainly not one of them; my colleagues often remarked on my coolness under pressure and my apparent lack of nerves if only they knew! Certainly, walking the Cumbrian fells with Mary and Specs (the dog) beats worrying all day about the evening’s high ‘A’, but it was great fun nonetheless.
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