Memorial concert for singer and teacher

A MEMORIAL concert for an opera singer and music teacher will be held next month.

Margaret Probyn Fish, a soprano who performed as Margaret Probyn, died earlier this year, aged 73.

She was a singing teacher at Henley Music School until she was diagnosed with blood cancer in March 2020, just before the first coronavirus lockdown.

She continued to give classes online but when face-to-face teaching returned she was advised not to resume these because of her low immune system.

Mrs Fish began her career as a singer after graduating from the London School of Music, where she was taught by Professor William Lloyd Webber, father of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and virtuoso cellist Julian Lloyd Webber.

She sung opera ranging from Mozart and Humperdinck to Benjamin Britten and Giancarlo Menotti. She was also involved in some of the great musicals as well as popular song, lieder and folk songs.

One of her most treasured memories was of singing with the King’s Division Normandy Band in the Falkland Islands in 1997. She began teaching more than 30 years ago and was in great demand in Buckinghamshire where she then lived.

She started teaching at Henley Music School when she moved to South Oxfordshire. She sang at the Kenton Theatre and with the Berkshire Maestros.

She met her second husband, Adrian Fish, in the late 2000s. He is a composer and broadcaster.

She gave her last performance at All Saints’ Church in Peppard last year and raised £274 to send supplies to Ukraine.

The memorial concert will be at All Saints’ Church in Dunsden on September 9 from 7.30pm. It will be introduced by her husband who will also perform.

Other artists, who all worked with Mrs Fish, will include bass baritone Charles Luxford, Helen Lam, the organist at Shiplake College, flautist Sean O’Connell and his wife Liz, singers Debbie and Peter Edwards, the choir of St Margaret’s Church, Harpsden and the Carra Singers, from Co Mayo in Ireland, conducted by Ausra Kvietkute as well as Margaret Thewsey, a soprano and the wife of the rector of Shiplake, Dunsden and Harpsden.

Admission is free but donations will be taken for Blood Cancer UK.