Antoinette Kirkwood
English composer / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Antoinette Kirkwood (26 February 1930 - 28 January 2014) was an English composer born in London, with Irish family connections.[1] She studied with Claud Biggs at the Irish Academy of Music and then piano and composition with Dorothy Howell and cello with Paul Tortelier at the Royal Academy of Music.[2] She often accompanied her mother, the soprano Rome Lindsay.[3] Radio Éireann broadcast her Symphony, op 8, composed in 1953.[2] This "very notable achievement", said one unidentified reviewer, established that Kirkwood "can write a memorable tune in a definite key and can hold the listener’s interest for a considerable time".[4] On 28 April 1960 the conductor Kathleen Merritt organized and conducted a Wigmore Hall concert of 'Contemporary British Women Composers', featuring the music of Kirkwood alongside Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Dorothy Howell, Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams.[5]
Kirkwood was the founder and conductor of the St Columba's Orchestra (associated with the London church) from 1957 until 1961. For four years beginning in 1969, she was a member of the executive committee of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain.
She married the writer Richard Phibbs (1911-1986, author of Buried in the Country, 1947) in 1961 at St Columba's.[6][7] Her marriage, three children and caring for her mother and husband through their terminal illnesses, led to a complete cessation in her composition activity between 1961 and the late 1980s.[1] During that period they were living at 56 Sutherland Street, London SW1.[8]
On her husband's death in 1986 she raised money to re-publish two of his books (Cockle Button, Cockle Ben, for children, and Harmony Hill, four short stories), as well as resuming her own career as a composer.[9] She died on 28 January 2014, aged 84.[10]