Some schoolteachers stay with you for life. For many of those who encountered him during his long career as a music educator, which ended only with his death at the age of 94, Austin Scott was one such.
As a pupil at Nottingham high school in the early 1960s, I spent several years under the spell of this gifted and volatile American, quickly learning – like so many others – to absorb the sudden gusts of temperament that would sweep down from the conductor’s rostrum and to appreciate his ability not only to teach us to play together, but to widen our musical horizons.
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