“Letters from Lines and Spaces”
A colourful, humorous, and sometimes perplexing picture of British musical life, written by a musician with a distinguished career than spans forty five years in classical and popular music, recalling his early experiences in orchestras with Benjamin Britten, Leopold Stokowski and Leonard Bernstein, in pop music, with Deep Purple, Frank Zappa, Barry White, and Paul McCartney, and as a top “session” french horn player featured on many studio recordings and television shows with Peggy Lee, Barbara Streisand, Paul Simon, and Tony Bennett.
Terry Johns played on dozens of film sound tracks, including “Fiddler on the roof”, “Oliver”, “Battle of Britain”, “Diamonds are for ever” and “Star Wars”.
The author’s musical life began in the brass band of Tower Colliery in South Wales, where his father worked as a miner. These letters are a personal tale of celebration and survival in the sometimes hostile and uncertain environment of professional music, where often the only security of employment is one’s skill and ability, and difficulties are greeted with the humour and resilience that has always characterized working musicians everywhere.
These letters are an important chronicle of a generation of players who, as well as experiencing the golden era that saw London as the musical capital of the world, encountered the difficult challenges of the technological age, the acrimonious strike against the BBC in 1980, the diminishing of their union’s power, the digital revolution, and the decline of the recording industry.
A colourful, humorous, and sometimes perplexing picture of British musical life, written by a musician with a distinguished career than spans forty five years in classical and popular music, recalling his early experiences in orchestras with Benjamin Britten, Leopold Stokowski and Leonard Bernstein, in pop music, with Deep Purple, Frank Zappa, Barry White, and Paul McCartney, and as a top “session” french horn player featured on many studio recordings and television shows with Peggy Lee, Barbara Streisand, Paul Simon, and Tony Bennett.
Terry Johns played on dozens of film sound tracks, including “Fiddler on the roof”, “Oliver”, “Battle of Britain”, “Diamonds are for ever” and “Star Wars”.
The author’s musical life began in the brass band of Tower Colliery in South Wales, where his father worked as a miner. These letters are a personal tale of celebration and survival in the sometimes hostile and uncertain environment of professional music, where often the only security of employment is one’s skill and ability, and difficulties are greeted with the humour and resilience that has always characterized working musicians everywhere.
These letters are an important chronicle of a generation of players who, as well as experiencing the golden era that saw London as the musical capital of the world, encountered the difficult challenges of the technological age, the acrimonious strike against the BBC in 1980, the diminishing of their union’s power, the digital revolution, and the decline of the recording industry.
