On Friday we celebrated the life of Jennet Campbell in Gerrans Church with a tribute led by Emma Campbell her daughter, and readings by daughter Sally and friends. Local poet and county councillor Bert Biscoe gave the eulogy.
Jennet Campbell was a critical influence on the development of many musicians in Cornwall, either directly or indirectly - through her own teaching or through the work of the Radford Trust and the instrument provision scheme they have provided for many children coming to music for the first time. She received and MBE and was created a bard in the Kernow Gorsedd for her contribution to music in Cornwall. She was the niece of musicians Maisie and Evelyn Radford, the two sisters who had settled St Anthony in Roseland and founded Falmouth Opera Group in the 1930s. She inherited their studio and Coastguards in the village and it was from this Cornish centre of operations that her remarkable contribution to music at parish level (formation of St Anthony's Players 1970, formation of St Anthony's Noyse - wind and brass ensemble), at the Duchy level with the Music Service, and on a national scale beyond through the many young musicians her organisational, teaching and commitment touched:
Her background was privileged and academic....her father was the Nobel prize-winner for medicine and physiology Lord Adrian sometime Master of Trinity College Cambridge. She had an education in Connecticut (due to evacuation during WW2) and read English at Somerville College, Cambridge. She was both shy and simultaneously forbidding to young musicians because of her high work ethic and standards - but she was absolutely determined to make her .
As a child I played with her children (Richard, Sally and Emma) and my brothers in some of the very earliest concerts of the St Anthony Players which Jennet and her husband Peter organised in Gerrans Church, St Just in Roseland Church and at teh Studio in Bohortha itself. As an undergraduate she welcomed a large choir (Intermedi) I put together with Chris Vigar, and orchestra made up of undergraduates to use the "studio" for a concert series in local churches, one series directed by Peter Phillips, director of the Tallis Scholars. Richard Campbell, her son became the professional viola da gamba player a founder of the pioneering viol consort Fretwork and for many years the bass line anchor of John Eliot Gardiner's baroque band English Baroque Soloists.
Jennet's activities in the local community were many but because of her modesty frequently under the wire e.g. volunteering for the Citizens Advice Bureau. Her career as a teacher in West London married with her flute and viola playing made her . She could also on occasion be quite fierce but only because her standards were high and with young people she usually had some cause! She had a long illness at the end of her life...but the presence of local musical community with family at teh wake demonstrated the affection and respect in which she was held by many
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