Mary Chandler (composer)

Kathleen Mary Chandler (16 May 1911 – 19 November 1996) was an English composer, oboist, pianist and teacher. Born in Eltham, South London, she studied music privately and at the Blackheath Conservatoire from August 1928, with Harry Farjeon (composition) and Harold Craxton (piano). Chandler maintained her interest in music, joining the Society of Women Musicians in 1935 and having her music first performed in public the following year. She took up the oboe from scratch in 1940, when her teachers were Margaret Eliot and Léon Goossens. She joined the Tunbridge Wells Symphony Orchestra on oboe as an amateur in 1942. In 1944, invited by George Weldon, she was appointed principal oboist of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (where she was a colleague in the oboe section with Ruth Gipps), and gave many recitals and broadcasts in the Midlands area. In May 1956 the CBSO gave the first performance and broadcast of her Concerto for Oboe d’amore with Léon Goossens as the soloist. The orchestra also performed her 1956 Trumpet Concerto, with soloist Bram Gay. After leaving the CBSO in 1958 she formed the Mercian Trio (flute, oboe and piano), which toured the country. In 1960 she was appo