A real day-brightener, this. Our far-flung correspondent Neville Young writes to tell us...
I came across your excellent blog while searching for news of my old friend Jack Fear, the one who (see 30 April 2003) did the Colston Hall, Bristol gig in 1953 and who had just retired from teaching in 2001.Neville also enclosed a photograph of the big man in action, "conducting a big band for a TV broadcast in the 70s"...So:
(a) thanks very much—I had fallen out of touch with Jack and wanted to contact him, and your mention of the school was a very useful pointer, and,
(b) I just wanted to let you know what a terrific guy your namesake in the SW of England is. As a teenager I played in a student big band that he ran and he was a fabulous bloke to have running it—dedicated, great with kids, and a wonderful musician.
Thanks and all good wishes
Neville Young
A harbinger of my future? Constant Reader, I should be so lucky.
(Neville Young, by the bye, is a pretty fabulous bloke in his own right: he's behind a fundraising effort for the Siyakhula Project, a music program based in Umlazi Township, near Durban, South Africa, that fuses jazz brass with traditional drumming, singing, and dance—just the kind of joyous pan-cultural mash-up we loves here in the House of Fear, and surely a worthy cause. Cheers, Neville!)
