John Drummond (arts administrator)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sir John Richard Gray Drummond

CBE (25 November 1934 – 6 September 2006) was a British arts administrator who spent most of his career at the BBC. He was described by Rodney Milnes of Opera
magazine as "one of the most formidable figures in the arts world of the UK for 40 years".[1]

Early life

Drummond was born in London, the son of a Scottish

British India line and an Australian singer, principally of lieder.[2][3] He spent much of his childhood in Bournemouth, being evacuated to the resort at the beginning of World War II, spending hours in the public library absorbing all he could on creative arts, and also attending concerts by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.[4]

He was educated at

Footlights Society and in 1956 wrote a musical about Regency Brighton entitled The First Resort. Kenneth Tynan queried why Cambridge was "wasting time on trash like this when they could be producing Brecht",[3] but it did gain a run a London's Arts Theatre.[5]

His contemporaries included

Marlowe Society, performing in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II, which was broadcast on the Third Programme in 1958 with Jacobi in the title role.[citation needed
]

Career

In 1958, he gained a BBC general traineeship,

In 1964, he was part of the launch team for BBC 2, and he directed/produced arts programmes for BBC Television, including The Golden Ring, a documentary about Georg Solti's Decca recording of the complete Der Ring des Nibelungen (Ring Cycle) by Wagner, a biography of singer Kathleen Ferrier, programmes about Diaghilev, a series on architecture Spirit of the Age, and masterclasses by French cellist Paul Tortelier.[1] His interest in ballet and dance was reflected in many of the programmes he produced for the BBC, and he appeared as presenter in many of them.[7]

Ultimately he became Assistant Head of Music and Arts at the insistence of his immediate superior, Humphrey Burton,[4] before becoming director of the Edinburgh International Festival at the end of 1977. Drummond's period at the Festival was particularly successful, and Norman Lebrecht commended him in a tribute for his multi-disciplinary approach in a celebration of 'fin de siècle' Vienna in 1983.[8] In his Guardian obituary, Humphrey Burton listed several highlights from his tenure in Edinburgh: operas in 1980 including Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse, for international theatre 1979 with the Rustaveli Company, Georgia, and 1980 for Bill Bryden's adaptation of the York and Wakefield mystery plays for the National Theatre, and starting a book fair and commissioning the Queen's Hall as a festival chamber music venue.[4]

Radio 3 and later life

After leaving his post in Edinburgh in 1983, he returned to the BBC and was appointed Controller, Music (in tandem with his predecessor

Last Night of the Proms
.

While Controller of Radio 3, Drummond introduced the co-ordination of interval talks with the evening concert, doubled the length of the Saturday morning

Record Review programme and scheduled the first Jazz concert at the Proms with Loose Tubes in 1987. He also devised 'weekends' covering all the arts in a particular city (Minneapolis, Berlin).[1] Humphrey Carpenter wrote that Drummond viewed Radio 3's audience as consisting of "thirty minority tastes, each of which is characterised by its intense dislike of the other twenty-nine".[9]

Drummond criticised Nigel Kennedy in 1991 for wearing a black cloak and 'Dracula' make-up while performing Berg's Violin Concerto,[10] and comparing Kennedy's usual punk clothing to the vulgarity of Liberace.[9] Kennedy had irritated him by claiming Drummond had an "attitude problem" and represented "the typical arrogance of a self-appointed guardian of the arts world".[2]

Having chosen not to renew his contract as Radio 3 Controller for a second five-year term in 1992, he became openly critical of the Birt regime at the BBC, for its managerial and populist instincts. For Drummond, the BBC "has been an organisation which has seen itself as leading society, not following taste. If it no longer wishes to be that, I can't see any reason for its existence." At about the same time, he called Tony Blair a "professional philistine" and attacked the Blair government for destroying "the national sense of culture".[11] At the very end of his autobiography he attacked what he saw as trends in the arts: "The lowest-common-denominator, accessibility-at-any-price, anti-intellectual laziness of so many of today's leaders [...] is a form of appeasement. Failing or refusing to differentiate between the good and the indifferent, while sheltering under a cloak of spurious democracy, is simply not good enough. It is a betrayal of all our civilization has stood for".[12]

Other activities and honours

John Drummond was chairman of

The Theatres Trust (1998–2001). He had also been on the Council of Management of the new music group, the Fires of London. In 1998 he made the annual Royal Philharmonic Society lecture with the title "Taking Music Seriously".[13]

He was appointed a CBE in 1990 and knighted five years later.

Foreign Office refused it on the grounds that as he worked for the BBC he was a Crown servant; the year after when he had left the BBC, he was offered directly, and accepted the honour.[14]

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Milnes, R. "Obituary: Sir John Drummond". Opera, November 2006, pp. 1311-1312.
  2. ^ a b "Sir John Drummond". The Times. 8 September 2006. Retrieved 25 September 2021. (subscription required)
  3. ^ a b c "Sir John Drummond". The Telegraph. 8 September 2021. Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  4. ^ a b c Burton, Humphrey; Kenyon, Nicholas (8 September 2006). "Sir John Drummond". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  5. ^ Tusa, John (22 September 2011). "Sir John Drummond". The Independent. Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  6. ^ Carpenter, p. 316
  7. ^ British Film Institute page for John Drummond, accessed 24 January 2014.
  8. ^ Drummond Won Plaudits, Enemies at BBC, Proms: Norman Lebrecht, accessed 18 January 2014.
  9. ^ a b Carpenter, p. 335
  10. ^ Tainted by Experience, A Life in the Arts, 2000, Faber, pp. 394-395.
  11. ^ Kennedy hits back at arts elitism, accessed 18 January 2014.
  12. ^ Quoted in editorial "Piece in our time". Opera, October 2006, p. 1159.
  13. ^ John Drummond at the Royal Philharmonic Society website Archived 1 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine accessed 24 January 2014.
  14. ^ Drummond, John (2000). Tainted by Experience, A Life in the Arts. London: Faber. p. 456.

External links

Preceded by Controller, BBC Radio 3
1987–1992
Succeeded by