Yvonne Adair

Yvonne Madeleine Adair (18 March 1897 – 17 December 1989) was a British pianist, teacher and composer whose educational compositions still regularly appear in the graded pieces of music college examination boards. Some pieces were published under the pen name Ella Fairall. Life Adair was born in Guernsey. Her father was the Wesleyan minister Philip George Adair, and from 1901 she grew up with her family at 2 Vauxhall Street, St Helier, Jersey. She was educated at Kent College, Folkestone and trained at the Royal Academy of Music, where she was a bronze and silver medallist. She taught with the Training School for Music Teachers in London, and privately, specialising in rhythmic and aural training for children. During the war (1916–18) she served in the War Office Intelligence Department. From 1945 she was a music teacher at Sheen Gate House Preparatory School. Her work includes original vocal, piano and percussion pieces and arrangements for individual learners and ensembles of young players, such as the collections Sketches from Hans Christian Andersen and Little Dog Tales. Between the 1930s and the 1950s Adair published a series of what Christopher Scobie calls “rhythmic, didacti