He died in obscurity in London in 1988


Immediately after uploading 'Did BBC derail career of black conductor' I visited a colleague from my EMI days. On his bookshelf was Rudolph Dunbar's 1939 Treatise on the clarinet (Boehm system) which yielded these rare photos. More on Dunbar in 'The Berlin Philharmonic's first black conductor'.


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'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
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