Our long-suffering Head of Music at Newcastle High School, May was famed locally for nurturing top quality choirs, and being an exceptional voice coach.
She brought the same dedication and indefatigable energy and drive to her work with the School. How those finely-tuned ears put up with decades of talentless thirteen-year-olds, scraping away at their violins, is a mystery. However, she taught and led the School choir and orchestra brilliantly, maintaining a high standard of public performances that always enhanced the School’s reputation.
She will always be remembered by former pupils with great affection.
When we sang in her music classes she told the tone deaf ones (“the growlers”) simply to mime the words!
She was ever ambitious: she once had the school orchestra learn and perform a very avant-garde piece called “Promenade” by Derek Bourgeois. It was beyond Stravinsky, even. But we managed it.
She was generous of her time too, encouarging instrumental students by giving her time to accomany them in the Memorial Hall during the morning break.
In 1972 she combined the orchestras and choirs of NHS and the Orme Girls School to perform Messiah, a work that she knew backwards: Stoke-on-Trent’s Ceramic City Choir was bound by the terms of a legacy to perform Messiah every year, and she conducted it.
Her talent, professionalism, enthusiasm, and dedication will never be forgotten by those of us who were fortunate to be her students.
Paul Dinsdale
29/06/2024
