RIP John Shirley-Quirk

[Pabmusic]

Not a bad epitaph Pabs

The things we leave behind (mainly, but not only, memories) constitute our 'immortality'.

[amateur51]

The things we leave behind (mainly, but not only, memories) constitute our 'immortality'.

And the row of spring onions (weeds most likely!) that will be nourished eventually by our own personal stardust, of course

[Pabmusic]

And the row of spring onions (weeds most likely!) that will be nourished eventually by our own personal stardust, of course

Have you read "We know you're busy working but we thought you woulsd't mind if we just dropped in for a minute" (or similar) by Edmund Crispin? You'll get the analogy if you read it (in the collection Fen Country).

[amateur51]

Have you read "We know you're busy working but we thought you woulsd't mind if we just dropped in for a minute" (or similar) by Edmund Crispin? You'll get the analogy if you read it (in the collection Fen Country).

Lovely recommendation Pabs - I'm just off to a well-known bookselling website

[Pabmusic]

Lovely recommendation Pabs - I'm just off to a well-known bookselling website

I hope you read it. It's one of the finest short crime stories, comparable to Stanley Ellin's "The Specialty of the House". (There's another, if you don't know it. Don't eat at Sbirro's.

[Petrushka]

I think I saw him in Schoenberg's "Survivor from Warsaw" with Simon Rattle and CBSO too

That may have been Benjamin Luxon (or it was when I heard the CBSO and Rattle in Birmingham, March 2 1995).

JS-Q did the Schoenberg before Tennstedt's LPO Mahler 5 on Dec 13 1988 and what a pity that this never made it on to the CD or DVD of that concert.

[Dave2002]

Nostalgia: I've just got this LP on ebay - I got rid of mine with my old turntable. But now I have another turntable Suspect I paid rather less than £6 when I bought it brand new (slightly manky sleeve but, mine probably had too. ...):

I had/have that one, and also the RVW Songs of Travel. I think I heard him in concert at least once - probably in Dream of Gerontius, and maybe on other occasions in other Elgar choral works.

I believe also that the Songs of Travel was available on CD - but not for long, as my local library had it and I thought of "liberating" it. Sadly I didn't, and it's no longer in the library catalogue. The Saga LPs are hard to track down in CD versions.

This link might be of interest, however - http://themusicparlour.blogspot.co.u...s-vaughan.html

[LeMartinPecheur]

I too treasure his Saga LP of RVW Songs of Travel, and was delighted to catch him as Don Alfonso in a Glyndebourne Touring Opera Cosi in Oxford, 1987.

[french frank]

Rather touching. My ebay LP arrived this morning and it had a large sheet of braille tucked inside; and what I thought was a torn sleeve was actually a white braille label. Still, the LP doesn't seem to have suffered. Glorious to hear that voice again.

[mercia]

nice tribute on that Sunday morning programme. Cynara and the Five Mystical Songs.

[bluestateprommer]

The NYT has a somewhat belated, but very nice, obit for JS-Q:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/arts/music/john-shirley-quirk-bass-baritone-is-dead-at-82.html

The Guardian's tribute mentioned his degree in chemistry, but it wasn't until I read the NYT article that I realized how far he had proceeded in that career line until making the switch to music.

(Guardian tribute, for the record: http://www.theguardian.com/music/201...-shirley-quirk)

I unfortunately never saw JS-Q live, but have heard him many times on record and liked what I heard. His recordings of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast and RVW's A Sea Symphony particularly stand out. He also served Michael Tippett well on The Vision of St. Augustine and The Ice Break, in addition to the various recordings of Britten opera. The closest I would have gotten, in the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon sense, is hearing his son Benjamin Shirley-Quirk with the Oberlin College Choir once in Cleveland, as the chorus in a Cleveland Orchestra performance of JSB's Cantata No. 56, " Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen", with Thomas Quasthoff as the baritone soloist, and FWM on the podium:

http://www2.oberlin.edu/con/connews/spr01/of_note2.html