Founder member of the King’s Singers, and orchestral bass player for over thirty years, this well travelled raconteur, ensemble tutor and a cappella specialist now undertakes speaking, coaching, and concert engagements.
“I was a monumentally unpromising boy treble, and was also described by Sir David Willcocks as the worst alto he’d ever had in his choir (King’s, Cambridge), two sure-fire preconditions for making a career in music. The decision to go down the musical path and not make further use of my law degree was, I’m sure, greeted with a collective sigh of relief by the legal profession; what sort of sigh the music profession sighed at that decision is, at the moment, unknown but probably huge and horrified.
“After twenty-five years on the road with The King’s Singers, and even more years on the fiddle as a bass player, the business of music-making at the highest level that seemed so important at the time (as indeed it was then) has yielded a rich harvest of irony, humour, downright silliness and huge enjoyment at having been a part of all that.
“The experience of singing for the EU Foreign Ministers at Brocket Hall and of meeting Charlie (Lord) Brocket, of touring in the US (assuming you make it past Immigration which is a serious challenge in itself), of wrestling with language and communications in Japan, and of being constantly surprised that the name of the group could be got so frequently and amusingly wrong, has enabled me to see how much more fun than I thought at the time the whole thing was and what a pleasure it is to share that fun with others.”
Alastair Hume also plays his double bass in Bach Plus Two
Photo by Barbara Stott