John Amis was born in
Dulwich, London, son of James Amis, whose elder brother, William, was father of the novelist
Kingsley Amis. James Amis, wealthier than his brother, "held a post in the merchant bank of Seligmann Brothers in
Austin Friars", earning "a respectable £800 a year"; the family's house at West Norwood was "a semi-detached, red-brick affair with... a little lawn at the back with vegetables and a loganberry bush at the bottom"; despite the perceptible difference between the Amis brothers' fortunes, John Amis recalled no "feeling of social difference between Norbury (where Kingsley Amis was raised) and West Norwood. We both lived in dreary houses in dreary streets." Amis was educated- "fully paid for"- at
Dulwich College (having also attended its preparatory school), where he began a lifelong friendship with his contemporary,
Donald Swann. A serious bout of
mastoiditis as a child left him deaf in his left ear. He began his career working in a bank for five and a half weeks before leaving to earn a living in music. Amis had a number of roles, including
gramophone record salesman, and orchestra manager (at one point turning pages for Dame
Myra Hess during the wartime concerts at the
National Gallery.), before becoming a music critic, initially with
The Scotsman in 1946. He was for several years manager for
Sir Thomas Beecham, and also worked for the
London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1948,
William Glock invited Amis to run a summer school for musicians at
Bryanston School, Dorset. The summer school moved to
Dartington in 1953. Amis remained administrative director until 1981, during which time he brought to the school a long line of international musicians, amongst them
Paul Hindemith,
Igor Stravinsky, and Sir
Michael Tippett. Amis' short career as a
tenor began with the role of Ishmael in the 1967 recording of
Bernard Herrmann's
cantata Moby-Dick. He made his
operatic debut in 1990 as the Emperor in
Turandot. Amis had started singing in earnest after 1959: in that year he attended Professor Frederick Husler's s singing class at Dartington 'just for fun', and was told not only that he had the makings of a
Heldentenor, but that he ought to go to Germany to study. From the 1950s onwards, Amis became a regular contributor to
BBC Radio's music output, and worked on BBC Television from 1961, producing and presenting documentaries, and introducing the
BBC2 magazine programme
Music Now. As a broadcaster, he is probably best known for his appearances as a team member, from 1974 to 1994, on the
BBC Radio 4 panel show,
My Music, also appearing in the television version. It was on this show that he disclosed an unexpected talent as a skilled
siffleur. His own radio show on
Radio 3 interviewed musicians and contemporary witnesses such as
Sir Isaiah Berlin. For many years he wrote a column on music in
The Tablet, England's best-known Catholic magazine. His friends in the music industry included
Noel Mewton-Wood and
Felix Aprahamian, for whom he wrote a tribute following Aprahamian's death in January 2005. He was also closely associated with
Gerard Hoffnung and organized many of Hoffnung's concerts until the latter's death in 1959; he performed a comic duet from
The Barber of Darmstadt with
Owen Brannigan at the 1961 Hoffnung Festival. As a critic, Amis often came across contemporaries including
Neville Cardus (
Manchester Guardian),
Frank Howes (
The Times), Scott Goddard (
News Chronicle) and
Richard Capell (
Telegraph). Amis wrote a number of books, on his own Amiscellany imprint, with titles including
My Music in London: 1945-2000. Amis spent much of his time giving talks and one-man shows, after dinner speeches and concert works. Amis was a patron of the Music Libraries Trust and the
Tait Memorial Trust, and a vice-president of the Putney Music society. ==Personal life==