A family business

22 July 2024

Messiah from Scratch has always been a family business. At the beginning, the founders and many of those who played or sang belonged either to the Imperial College scientific ‘family’ or to the family of Music Campers who met during the year to do what it said on the tin: camp and perform music. As the years have gone on, two, and now three, couples have shared the administration between them.

David Burgess’s partner (later wife) Susan was involved from the outset. Initially she helped with leafleting, later dealing with the postal demands for tickets. Officially she was a law student at King’s College, London University, but spent most of her spare time playing the trombone. She played in Imperial College Symphony Orchestra with David and Don and soon found herself roped in. As the pace hotted up, she became very busy indeed and even played her trombone in the first performance.  (Don Monro used the Mozart orchestration for the first five years to ensure he could take part with his clarinet!)

Ann Monro’s chief occupation in the early years was to keep house and bring up two small children. With a third child on the way, and grandparents far away in Canada, she could not even take time off to join the others in the pub after orchestra rehearsals and eavesdrop on their plans. She managed to attend on 5 December and her diary entry reads ‘Terrific! A somewhat chaotic Messiah but lots of fun, particularly for the performers’. She also recalls thinking ‘Thank goodness that’s over’, before discovering that the venture’s success meant that another was immediately planned, then another, and another …

Susan became more involved in subsequent performances. Between 1981 and 1992, with two small children of her own, she ran the operation from home, essentially single-handed. By 1988, having gone back to full-time teaching, there were simply not enough hours in the day. She writes: ‘I vividly remember getting up at 5 o’clock some days, to put in three hours of Tuesday Partnership work before the boys woke’. By 1992, Don and David had begun to disagree about the future direction of the enterprise and ended up going their separate ways. Don found himself in sole charge ‘at about the time when most parents . . . can look forward to some peace and quiet together’. From that date, ‘Ann shouldered the burden of booking and ticketing; without her, Messiah from Scratch would have closed down.’

Don favoured expansion and pursued the use of trademarks to protect the ‘from Scratch’ concept. By 2003, with three Royal Albert Hall concerts each year, plus trips abroad and choral cruises, he needed more help. Two more families were recruited: Tony and Annie Hastings, and Trevor Ford and his wife Marianne Barton. (Trevor had been providing the orchestra for RAH concerts since 1993.) The family business modus operandi continues to this day, although now with three families.

The concept of running Messiah from Scratch® as a family business has always worked for us. Sadly, Don died in 2014, David in 2021, but we remain inspired by the vision of the original Tuesday Partnership. Messiah from Scratch® is flourishing at 50!

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