June 1947 – 21 October 2025
The composer Geoff Cummings-Knight died on 21 October following a recent stroke. He had endured nine years of severe health issues (kidney-related) and so this turned out to be a welcome release for him. He was 78.
Geoff was born in Colwyn Bay, grew up in Scarborough and trained as a primary school teacher at Trent Park College, London, before and started his career in the field where he would achieve some of his most original work: operas for children (more on that later).
In 1973 Geoff took advantage of a one-year Post-Graduate Teacher’s Supplementary Course at the then-Birmingham School of Music, gaining the ABSM piano teaching diploma. This was how we met – when I heard him play some of his piano music during a student concert and was immediately taken with his original voice – melodically memorable, but also harmonically sophisticated and very personal. We soon gathered students together to put on his songs and piano music in college concerts – and so started a friendship lasting over 50 years.
After leaving the BSM, Geoff went back into teaching, this time in High Wycombe, but also found time to pursue a BMus course at Goldsmith’s College, London, studying with Anthony Milner, Patric Standford, and also Cornelius Cardew – who though being so very different in creative outlook to Geoff, was greatly respected by him for his original personality. After graduation, Geoff moved to Worthing so take up a post at a middle school and was there for around 10 years.
This was an especially fruitful and rewarding time: his Cantata The Emperor and the Nightingale (after Hans Christian Andersen) was performed in Worthing Assembly Rooms by the Worthing Youth Orchestra and various school choirs, and led to some significant premieres by the Worthing Symphony Orchestra under Jan Cervenka: Symphony no.2 on 6 March 1983, A Festival Overture on 20 June 1990 (for the Worthing Borough Centenary), and the Piano Concerto in C on 2 June 1985. How the latter came about merits more attention.
During one of my summer visits to Geoff. I had introduced him to the renowned concert pianist Philip Challis, who lived in nearby Goring-by-Sea and whose broadcasts on Radio 3 I had greatly admired and so wanted to meet him for myself. This was a most successful meeting: Philip and Geoff got on very well from the start and Philip played some of Geoff’s piano music for local music clubs, but more importantly this was how the commission came about for the piano concerto, for which Philip was the soloist.
In 1987 Geoff married Jennie, and along came Joseph, Isaac and Elizabeth in due course. In the early 1990’s the family moved into the grounds of Great Walstead School, Haywards Heath on Geoff’s appointment there; but his happiest time was the move to Scotland as Music Master at Croftinloan School, Pitlochry. Geoff loved Scotland – as can be seen in the above picture and was also able to pursue his additional passion of history while being a classical music disc-jockey and radio documentary presenter for Pitlochry’s Heartland FM radio station – which became the subject of a BBC TV series in 1998 in which Geoff was featured. He also had Scottish allies in the form of Colin Scott-Sutherland (1930-2012), a long-time correspondent of mine and renowned writer on so many aspects of British music and poetry, and who arranged to visit Geoff for lunch during one of my own visits.
Another Scottish connection was with Kenneth Roberton of ‘Roberton Publications’ who issued Geoff’s 24 Preludes in 1987 in a facsimile edition, leading to the premiere given by myself at the BMIC, Stratford Place, London in October 1991. Sadly, this very happy time came to an end when Croftinloan School was forced to close in 2000. Geoff moved to another school appointment in Doncaster before a very welcome retirement beckoned. But not entirely – Geoff went on to pursue an MA course at Leeds University in film music and graduated successfully, but without any commissions to produce film music – a craft he would have loved to have pursued.
Geoff’s 70th birthday was celebrated in June 2017 in Northrepps Parish Church (near Cromer, East Anglia) where Geoff and Jennie had moved many years earlier. The pianist Duncan Honeybourne, to whom I had played some of Geoff’s music in 2000, became very enthusiastic about it, was invited to take part in the concert and decided to record a CD album of Geoff’s piano music: ‘The Road Less Travelled’ for Prima Facie Records in 2020. But this high point was gradually marred by Geoff’s developing health issues: kidney failure was threatening and years of dialysis followed, restricting his activities until his sudden death this year.
Geoff’s output, aside from chamber music, piano works and songs, includes two symphonies, the choral works The Emperor and the Nightingale, The Turning Year (to Chinese poetry), and in 2005 the premiere of Severn Rides for Severn Lovers – a cantata in celebration of the Severn Valley Railway commissioned by Kidderminster Choral Society and involving choirs from local schools.
In my review for BMS News in June 2005 I commented on how the excellent conductor Geoff Weaver successfully managed all the forces at his command while having to shout out at one point “…you’ll have to wait, the buffet car opens late!” Geoff had, of course, thoroughly researched the history of the SVR and written all the words – and there were a lot of them! But undoubtedly his most unique and original contributions are the operas for children, including Nebuchadnezzar, Jacob’s Ladder and Tobias and the Angel.
Geoff also wrote plays: Sixtus V puts a very different perspective on ‘The Merchant of Venice. He also designed the stage sets, being able, uncannily, to re-enter a child’s imaginative world without ever writing down to them – as I wrote for BMS in June 2005: “Of course, if you want the staple diet of this kind of repertory – four-square predictable tunes with three-chord harmony than can be played by the average school music teacher, then these operas will not suit because they are that rarest of things – a true and original work of Art. But don’t today’s children deserve such things?
Written by Michael Jones