archive

Images of years past

50 years ago

Some personal memories of the choir in the 1950s

By Sandra Dudley, daughter of Kenneth Allen

Sandra has vivid memories of the beginnings of the choir in the 1950's when it started life as Margate Festival Choir. She was a small girl when her father Kenneth Allen met and became close friends with George Vesey and his wife Eileen Rickon. George and Eileen were fine local musicians as well as being Chairman and Secretary of the MFC respectively.

The "team" of Stanford Robinson as conductor (a well-known national conductor with the BBC), George Vesey as chorus master, Eileen Rickon as soprano soloist and Kenneth Allen as bass baritone soloist became the core of the choir for many years.

Performances in the 1950's were well received judging by the press reports. At that time Margate Town Council sponsored the choir enabling it to perform in the Winter Gardens and there were special buses laid on from the surrounding towns for the audience. There were other prestigious concerts such as in the Purcell Room and an audition with the BBC.

Sandra remembers the constant music in her Westgate home as her father Ken, then an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, rehearsed his solos or taught. One particular concert at the Winter Gardens sticks in her mind particularly, when a guest conductor took a deep breath to bring in the orchestra and sucked his dentures down his throat!

25 years later in 1984

George Vesey

Page last updated 10/02/09