Wednesday 10th May sees the return of feted conductor Anthony Inglis to the Isle of Wight, the place where he was born and raised.
He’ll be here to talk about his new autobiography ‘Sit Down, Stop Waving Your Arms About!’, and where better to give the talk than the Island Sailing Club in Cowes, a club founded by his great grandfather Dr Percy Gibson.
Grammy-nominated Anthony Inglis, the conductor who it has been said has featured more times at London’s Royal Albert Hall than anyone else in the building’s history has been described in the UK press as ‘one of Britain’s most popular conductors’.
Though born into the Royal Air Force with 8 of his relatives, senior and distinguished pilots in the service, his family history did not stop him from deciding at the age of 6 that he was going to conduct. Knowing academia was not for him he battled to persuade his teachers and even his own parents that he did not need educating at expensive private schools. In the end, they agreed and he left school early to study music.
His book tells the story of a stellar career, from a music scholarship at Marlborough College, then to The Royal College of Music, he spent his early professional life conducting shows in the West End and the English National Ballet and Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet. He progressed to a busy international career, appearing with some of the greatest orchestras in concert halls from New Zealand to Scotland via Japan and America. As well as orchestras in the USA and Europe, these include the four main London independent orchestras: London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic and Philharmonia orchestras, all the British independent and most BBC orchestras, the 5 main Australian orchestras, and the Gothenburg, Singapore symphony orchestras and Warsaw and Israel philharmonic orchestras.
Organised by Medina Bookshop in Cowes, the event at the Island Sailing Club begins at 19:00 with a glass if fizz on arrival, followed by a 2 course dinner before Anthony gives his talk. There will also be an opportunity to buy copies of the book and get them signed by the author himself.
