SIDONIE GOOSENS. The Goossens family were of
Belgian Catholic stock and had settled in
Liverpool on the retirement of the conductor
Eugene I from the Carl Rosa Opera Company.
Eugene's grandchildren would later
dominate the musical life of the United Kingdom
and the World. Eugene III (later Sir Eugene
Goossens) became a composer and conductor (at one
time he was principal conductor of the Sydney
Symphony Orchestra). His brother, Leon, became a
well known oboist whose surviving recordings are
much prized. Another brother, Adolphe, a renowned
horn player, was killed in WW1. 
The two harpist sisters, Sidonie
and Marie, also achieved international fame.
Sidonie was born on 19 October 1899 in Liscard, Cheshire.
In 1924 Sidonie Goossens married the conductor Hyam Greenbaum.
She joined the BBC in 1927 and was principal harpist
with the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1930 until her
retirement. She also recorded with
Jack Hylton's band in 1936 ("Sweet Sue") and
played with various other dance bands including
those featuring Carroll Gibbons and Geraldo. In 1923
Sidonie Goossens was the first solo harpist to
broadcast on radio, and in 1936 the first to appear on television.
At a Promenade Concert in the Royal Albert Hall
in August 1988, she played the harp part in Vaughan
Williams's Serenade to Music, which she had also played
at its first performance in that hall fifty years earlier.
On the Last Night of the Proms in September 1991
she accompanied singer Dame Gwyneth Jones in
'The Last Rose of Summer'. She celebrated her 100th
birthday in 1999 - a special concert was held in her honour
at the Wigmore Hall in London. Sidonie Goossens
died at the age of 105 on 15 December 2004.
The picture above shows Sidonie Goossens in
conversation with the composer/conductor, Igor
Stravinsky.
(Photo with acknowledgement to the BBC)
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JACK MACKINTOSH was born into a musical family in
Sunderland, in the North-east of England, on 22
September 1891. His father was the
conductor of the Sunderland East End Prize
Band.
Mackintosh started playing the
cornet at the age of six and was largely
self-taught. He went to Barnes School,
Sunderland and Scurry’s College, Newcastle
and began his professional career at the age of
15 by playing for silent films at the Hamilton
Picture House (later the Palace Theatre).
He later played with the Hetton Colliery brass
band at the Crystal Palace in 1912, and in 1913
as a front-row player in the St. Hilda' s band
led by Arthur Laycock.
He went to the Harton
Colliery band in 1919 and was their solo cornet
player until 1930 when he left to join the brass
section of the BBC Symphony Orchestra as a
founder member.
He is shown third from the left in a photograph
taken in the Corn Exchange, Bedford during the
war. The principal of the section, Ernest
Hall, is in the foreground. When Jack
retired in 1952 his place was taken by his son.
(Photo with acknowledgement to the BBC)
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JULIAN HERBAGE was a well known twentieth century
musicologist. His edited versions of many
classical works, including Handel's 'The
Messiah', achieved world-wide recognition. He had
a long association with the BBC. It was Herbage
who, in the 1920s, instigated and set-up the
structure for a permanent BBC orchestra. He was
the BBC's musical programme planner from
1927-1946 and organised the return of the BBC
orchestras to London from Bedford in 1945. For
many years after the war, together with Anna
Instone, Herbage presented the BBC's 'Music
Magazine' Programme.
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