Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club

Memories from Percy Timberlake 

For 40 years before the second World War, the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club was a gentlemen's residential club in the West End of London. Its members saw it as a London Club as well as a place for making music, and themselves as a settled part of it. It was into this scenario that the young Tommy Evans entered in January 1936 during the Cambridge vacation. He had paid one previous visit to the Club house in Bedford Square with a group of performers from the Cambridge University Musical Club. From 1937 onwards he was an intermittent habitué when not working outside London : in his own words "it was my London pied-à-terre".

Back in London after the war Tommy joined enthusiastically in the efforts to find premises for the by-this-time homeless Club and started his long and highly entertaining career as a member of the Committee. For in addition to being a fine musician Tommy was a gifted comic. This and his diminutive stature lent an especially memorable quality to his occasional interjections and well-timed exit lines ("I'm afraid I shall have to leave you now. I'm going through a change of life and find it very time-consuming").

He was at his most unforgettable also as narrator in 'Ba Ba the Elephant' and again in 'Oberon' - "With your permission I shall take a few liberties with costume" , at which he put up an umbrella and donned a sou'wester to simulate conditions off Oberon's wind-swept coast in a storm, explaining that the reason why everyone emerged unscathed was that "they were fairies, don't you see ?". This to the accompaniment of appreciative guffaws from worldly-wise members of the band.

Sandwiched between his wisecracks were outstanding musical feats such as his rushing-tearing roar from the organ of St Paul's Covent Garden at 'the veil of the temple was rent in twain' in the St John Passion.

As pianist, organist, conductor, singer, as well as humourist, Tommy served the Club as no other could through six decades, holding down several Club offices on the way. With him goes one of the last of those who spent their whole adult life with the Club, starting in his case with its residential days and continuing in the new millenium.