Eva Kathleen Merritt (1901November 1985) was a British conductor who led her own orchestra from the 1920s into the 1970s. She was best known as a pioneering woman conductor, and for her local music-making in Petersfield, Hampshire. Merritt was born in Petersfield and attended Bedales School and then the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including pe ...

(violin, piano and conducting). She joined the (then ad hoc) Petersfield Festival Orchestra in 1920 as a first desk violinist. She became conductor of the Sheet Choral Society from 1923, and of the Sheet Orchestra from 1924.''Kathleen Merritt, 60 Second history''
Petersfield Shine Radio, 8 March 2021 From 1927 she founded and became conductor of the Petersfield Orchestra, a post she held until 1973. Merritt also served on the Petersfield Music Festival committee for 43 years.Petersfield Orchestra: History
/ref> She lived at Bridge House in the centre of Petersfield. The Petersfield Music Festival had its peak years in the 1930s: it was a four-day event, incorporating choral competitions and running multiple concerts featuring many regional musicians and singers. Along with Merritt, the local philanthropist Harry Roberts helped raise funds to build a new Town Hall, which opened in 1935 as the primary Festival venue. It is now known as the Festival Hall. In 1939 she founded the Kathleen Merritt Orchestra. During the Second World War, while both the orchestra and the Petersfield Festival were paused, Merritt continued to encourage the development of local music making and choirs, working as music advisor for the National Union of Townswomen's Guilds. After the war her orchestra, renamed as the Southern String Orchestra in 1952,''Who's who in Music and Musicians' International Directory''
(1962), p. 142 premiered many new works by British composers, including music by women composers. Merritt was known beyond her local music circles. She was a friend and correspondent of Ralph Vaughan Williams and a frequent broadcaster on the

BBC Third Programme The BBC Third Programme was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 3. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces ...

from the late 1940s and into the 1950s. She was violinist with the New English String Quartet from 1930 until 1935. Her orchestra, and sometimes sections of the orchestra, performed concerts in London and elsewhere, such as the well-received Purcell concert put on by the string section at Queen Mary Hall on 1 November 1938. She also founded the Southern Orchestra Concert Society, which organized concerts across the South of England. On 28 April 1960 Merritt organized and conducted a Wigmore Hall concert of 'Contemporary British Women Composers', featuring the music of Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Dorothy Howell, Antoinette Kirkwood, Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams.'London Concerts: Six Women Composers'
in ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 101, No. 1408, June 1960, pp. 373-374 Merritt was one of the pioneers who helped open up the world of conducting to women musicians in Britain. Others included the older generations of Florence Ashton Marshall, Gwynne Kimpton and Ethel Leginska, and her near contemporaries Avril Coleridge-Taylor, Iris Lemare and Kathleen Riddick. She retired in 1972, receiving an MBE for services to music. Her successor at the Petersfield Orchestra was Judith Bailey. Subsequent conductors were Nick Barnard (from 2001) and Robin Browning.

Selected premiere performances

Elisabeth Lutyens Agnes Elisabeth Lutyens, CBE (9 July 190614 April 1983) was an English composer. Early life and education Elisabeth Lutyens was born in London on 9 July 1906. She was one of the five children of Lady Emily Bulwer-Lytton (1874–1964), a me ...

: ''O Saisons, O Chateaux!'' (1947) *

Grace Williams Grace Mary Williams (19 February 1906 – 10 February 1977) was a Welsh composer, generally regarded as Wales's most notable female composer, and the first British woman to score a feature film. Early life Williams was born in Barry, Vale o ...

: ''The Dark Island'', suite for string orchestra (1949) * Norman Demuth: Divertimento No 1 for strings (1951) * Gordon Jacob: Concertino for piano and string orchestra (1951) * Elizabeth Maconchy: Piano Concertino (1951) * Philip Cannon: ''Songs of Delight''; Sinfonietta for strings (1951) * Kenneth Leighton: 'Symphony for Strings (Op.3)' (1952) * Antoinette Kirkwood: Suite for string orchestra (1960) * Michael Hurd: Sinfonia Concertante (1968)''English String Miniatures, Vol. 3''
Naxos 8.555069 (2001)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Merritt, Kathleen 1901 births 1985 deaths Alumni of the Royal College of Music 20th-century British women musicians 20th-century English conductors (music) British women conductors (music) Musicians from Hampshire People educated at Bedales School People from Petersfield Women's orchestras