Profiles: John Owen

Staff Profile: John Owen, Britten–Pears School Administrator 1978-1991

John Owen was the longest serving administrator of the Britten–Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies, working there from 1978-1991. He now runs Owen/White Management, an agency for singers and instrumentalists. Aldeburgh Alumni that are on his roster include Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz, Mary Plazas, Anthony Marwood, Olivier Dumait, Fionnula Hunt and Cynthia Millar to name just a few.

John began his career here as a box office helper in the summer of 1978. The new school building was scheduled to be finished and opened in 1979, so William Servaes (the administrator at the time) asked John if he would like to stay on 'as a dog's body'to help with the setting up and the running of the school. Before then, the masterclasses and the concerts had taken place all over Aldeburgh and on the stage of the concert hall. Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears enlisted the help of the retired educational guru, William Swinburne, to help them realise their dreams of a postgraduate centre of excellence for strings and voice. In the initial years, the singing and string guest teachers were friends and colleagues of Britten and Pears that were keen to teach the young students and come and visit. Some were retired professionals and some were still working: Joan Cross, Lucie Manen, Charles Cleall, Eric Crozier, Paul Hamburger, Janet Craxton, Mstilav Rostropovitch, Emmanuel Hurwitz, John Shirley-Quirk, Pierre Fournier, Joseph Gringold are some of the illustrious names on the list. The original faculty listing on the course details looked something like this:

Director of String Studies - Cecil Aronowitz
Director of Singing Studies - Peter Pears
Director of Study Courses- Donald Mitchell
Education Administrator - William Swinburne

After the sad and untimely death of Cecil in 1978, Hugh Maguire took over as Director of String Studies, and John became the Administrator for String Courses and manager of the Snape Maltings Training Orchestra, which had been started a few years before as a small chamber orchestra. In 1980, Peter Pears made the decision to combine the two departments under one administrator and he asked John to take over as Administrator of the Britten–Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies. He was now in charge of everything: budgets, courses, staff and musicians.

At this time, Peter was still travelling around the world, auditioning singers and players for the school and inviting them to attend. Nancy Evans had become Co-Director of Singing Studies and was running the school with John while he was away. When Peter became too ill to travel, John took over the auditioning and would send all of the tapes back to Nancy and Peter to hear them. Hugh Maguire was at this time leader of the ROH and LSO orchestras, so he had access to all of the world's top talent. He would ask people like Colin Davis, Neville Marriner, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and Hans Werner Henze to come and conduct a young orchestra of extremely talented musicians. The hook was that they could do whatever repertoire they wanted but couldn't fit in to their performance schedules.

John was in charge of organising all of the courses, making sure that the talent was well looked after, doing the audition tours and even greeting the artists at the airport. There was a great feeling of nurturing both for student and teacher as they had ten days to develop artistically under the watchful eye of Peter Pears and Nancy Evans. Usually, the guest teachers would be taken to dinner every night, and they would have lively discussions about the masterclasses that had taken place that day. Nancy's famous black book would come out and she would refer to the notes she had made that day to discuss particular technical issues that the teacher may not have had time to deal with in the lesson. As a result, John learned a tremendous amount about vocal technique, artistic interpretation and repertoire.

The list of guest teachers remained very impressive including Hugues Cuenod, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Suzanne Danco, Ileana Cotrubas, Hans Hotter, Kurt Equiluz, Thomas Allen, Galina Vishnevskaya, William Pleeth, Norbert Brainin, Pierre Fournier, Milan Skampa were just a few of them. They would all return year after year because of their friendships with Peter and Nancy but also because they were made to feel welcome and comfortable here in Aldeburgh by John. The masterclasses and performances increased, with almost a year-round schedule of courses and recitals. In the early 1980s, Peter suggested Murray Perahia join the school as a teacher and conductor. Murray had been accompanying Peter on Britten's recommendation, after he had become too ill to play for him, and Peter thought that he would be a tremendous asset to the school. He was. John said that it was Murray's triumphant work on the school production of Così fan tutte in 1985 that resulted in a greater emphasis being placed on opera. They had started a few years earlier with simple opera scenes on the stage, but with minimal props and costumes and they were very popular with the concert hall audiences. So they planned the 'The Turn of the Screw', which was directed by Basil Coleman and was completely sold out. The ball started rolling with the tradition of staging a whole opera in the Festival with the students from the school.

The Britten–Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies was well and truly established as a centre of excellence for postgraduate students in singing and strings. John worked tirelessly to make sure that everyone felt taken care of. Jackie Shave, an Aldeburgh alumna of many different courses and performances both as a soloist, leader of the BPO and member of the Brindisi Quartet, remembers going back to John's house after a night in the White Hart with a group of friends and watching old movies like 'Halloween' and 'Brief Encounter'. He was instrumental in keeping the atmosphere of relaxed concentration in the running of the school so that everyone could have the luxury of performing at their very best.

John told a wonderful anecdote at the end of this interview about Peter Pears: Peter Pears was teaching up until the day he died. In the car on the way back to Aldeburgh from the Maltings, he asked John if he thought there was any guest teacher he might have missed or not asked to give masterclasses for the students. John replied, 'Not at all'. Judging from the archives and the list of teachers and students, he didn't leave a stone unturned.

The staff are the epicentre of Aldeburgh Music. They work tirelessly to ensure that the Festival and the year-round events run smoothly and that the artists and the audiences have a wonderful and enriching experience. It takes a tremendous amount of hard work to make things look so easy! If you would like to suggest Aldeburgh staff for profiling, please submit your nominations to alumni@aldeburgh.co.uk.

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