RIP: Bob Gilmore

[MrGongGong]

Probably not known to most folks here
BUT to those who knew him, his untimely death has come as a shock.
Bob wrote what is the seminal book on Harry Partch

http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300065213

and was a great and inspiring teacher

http://www.bobgilmore.co.uk/

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2015/01/bob-gilmore-1961-2015.html

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This is shockingly sad news, MrGG - BG had only taken up the editorship of Tempo this time last year and his moving and deeply affectionate tribute to his late predecessor, Malcolm MacDonald appeared in the last edition. Continuing MacDonald's incredible work would have been daunting for anyone; the four editions under Bob Gilmore's editorship suggested that it was in the very safe hands of someone who was taking the magazine into lively new directions. I shall deeply miss the journey we have been denied and I mourn his loss.

[MrGongGong]

A sad loss to music and musicology
I spent Saturday rehearsing with an old friend who had Bob as his PHd supervisor who was telling me that Bob had been very ill since I last saw him but no indication that he was ill again.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

From BG's memorial of Malcolm MacDonald:

And now ...he himself has passed away, all too soon. When we speak of "struggling with an illness", we only partly mean that we want to kick the thing away for as long as we can; we also mean ... that we will struggle to carry on with the worthwhile things of life until our bodies finally make it impossible. ... We can best pay our respects to his memory by carrying on the work that he himself carried on with such devotion and steadiness for so long.

Sadly, for Bob Gilmore (as, indeed for MacDonald) not nearly long enough.

[ahinton]

All above sentiments wholly endorsed. I did not know Bob Gilmore but I'd known, admired and respected Malcolm MacDonald since I was introduced to him and his work in the 1970s.

Two very sad losses indeed.

[MrGongGong]

http://www.christopherpressler.com/?p=377

[Tapiola]

A most moving memorial. Thanks for posting Mr GG.

I knew Bob when we were both postgraduates in the '90s. A deep thinker and individualist, with that shock of red hair, and real passion for his subject, he epitomised a peculiar breed of Northern Irish academic.

We were never close friends, but his premature passing is most shocking to me. All best wishes to his widow and son.

RIP Bob

[Richard Barrett]

Bob and I overlapped at Brunel University for a year, having met probably in 2006 or so, and he acted as external examiner for numerous exams at the Institute of Sonology in the last three or four years, after his illness dictated that he stop commuting from Amsterdam to teach in London. He was supposed to have been starting a more regular teaching position at Sonology from September, which he and we were very excited about, but when the time came he was already too ill to commit to a regular schedule. His work over the past year as editor at Tempo magazine was superb and highly promising for the future; his most recent publication projects were a biography of the Canadian composer Claude Vivier, and editing Artistic Experimentation: An Anthology, published by the Orpheus Instituut in Ghent (where he was a research fellow).

The last time I visited him at home in Amsterdam was at the end of August, where I found him and his wife Elisabeth tuning a Partch Kithara which they'd obtained a grant to have made by a Dutch luthier. His son Ben had recently moved in with them after living in Vienna for some years, and was to be heard in another part of the house practising Bach solo violin music. We spent the afternoon chatting about mutual enthusiasms and about Bob's activities as a performer, principally with his own group Trio Scordatura, which specialised in microtonal music of various kinds. I feel privileged in having had the opportunity to get to know, if only for a few years, such an inspiring, incisive-minded, generous-hearted and (in every way) entertaining individual. This was a very sad start to 2015.