Beecham’s son has died, aged 91

We have been informed of the death of Paul Strang, a non-musician who played a key backstage role in several music organisations.

Paul was the child of the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham and the English soprano Dora Labette, with whom he had a 13-year affair.

A lawyer by vocation, Paul Strang joined the board of Trinity College of Music back in 1974 and became chair in 1992. He worked with three successive principals to merge Trinity with Laban Dance Centre and move the new hybrid out of central London, to Greenwich.

He also supported the Kathleen Ferrier Prize and the Museum of Music History.

His wife Jeanne predeceased him last August. They lived in a musical corner of St John’s Wood, north London, with Maggie Teyte, Charler Mackerras, Gerald Moore and Philip and Ursula Jones among their neighbours.

From his memories of the locality:

My father, Sir Thomas Beecham, also lived in the area on and off, but my mother and he had parted and he had remarried.  I never went to either of his two homes in the Wood, although he once came to Emmie (Tillett)’s for a rather uncomfortable dinner, at which I was so awestruck that I probably didn’t utter a word…