JOHN WEEKES - grandson of the founder of the Plymouth Symphony Orchestra

 Photo courtesy of Chris Robinson and The Herald

JOHN WEEKES

30 October 1910 – 10^th April 2010

John Weekes, who was Chairman of the Plymouth Orchestral Society for many years, came from a long line of musicians.  The Orchestra was founded in September 1875 by John’s grandfather, Dr Samuel Weekes, who already conducted his own choral society in Plymouth. John’s father, Walter Weekes, returned in about 1900 to Plymouth from his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London and became deputy conductor, and subsequently conductor – a post he held until 1939. Family tradition has it that a connection can be forged back to Thomas Weelkes, the seventeenth century composer of madrigals and other religious works.

John was a talented but largely untrained musician in spite of these illustrious predecessors.  He was a good brass player but also played percussion instruments and, ultimately, became the Orchestra’s timpanist.  His younger sister, Peggy, played the cello and was a member of the Orchestra until her marriage.

John’s first memory of the Orchestra was at the aged of 9, having a single stroke to play on the gong in the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony.  He sat with the orchestra for two hours waiting to play his one note! This could have been the beginning of a lifetime of counting bars at the back of the orchestra but his wife was convinced he could sit at the timpani, read his newspaper, and somehow sense when he had an entry!

Much to the chagrin of his classically-trained father, John also had a liking for jazz, and what he used to call ‘dance bands’.  He started up a dance band, later taken over by Frank Fuge, for the Moorland Links Hotel, a new hotel near Yelverton which  opened just after the war.

John was for many years the Orchestra’s timpanist. The art of the timpanist is often underrated. Not only do you have to hit the drum at the right time (with a large penalty in embarrassment if you get it wrong), but in those days before automatic tuning, you had often to retune the drums manually while the Orchestra continued to play. That process required a very fine ear, and one of the blessings of John’s life was that he retained his hearing unimpaired until his death. Indeed, in his last few weeks of life, music on the radio was about the only thing that roused him from sleep and brought a smile to his face.

Click here for Herald article dated 19th April 2006 "The life and times of John Weekes"