Norah Chambers
Norah Chambers | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1905 Singapore |
| Died | 1989 (aged 84) Jersey |
| Nationality | British |
Norah Chambers (1905–1989) was a chorale conductor who conducted an orchestra of women prisoners of war in Sumatra.
Biography[]
Chambers was born Margaret Constance Norah Hope to engineer James Laidlaw Hope and Margaret Annie Ogilvie Mitchell in 1905, Singapore. She was sent to boarding school in Aylesbury, England and went on to attend the Royal Academy of Music, London. Chambers studied piano, the violin, and chamber music. She went on to perform with the Royal Academy of Music orchestra under Sir Henry Wood.[1][2][3]
Chambers married engineer John Lawrence Chambers in 1930 Malaya and they had a daughter Sally in 1933. She taught violin locally. After the Japanese invasion, Chambers travelled for five days through the jungle from Malaya to Singapore and succeeded in getting her daughter evacuated to Perth in Australia. She was also evacuated but the Vyner Brooke, her ship, was bombed and destroyed. She was interned in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, her husband sent to another. In 1943 she founded a vocal orchestra with Margaret Dryburgh, writing out the music from memory. Chambers was reunited with her family and returned to Malaya. She retired in 1952 to Jersey where she composed music for, and directed the St. Mark's Church choir in St. Helier. After the war the music produced in the camps was performed widely. Her work and time in the camp was the inspiration for the film Paradise Road.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
Sources[]
- ^ a b "Chambers, Norah (1905–1989)". www.encyclopedia.com. Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages.
- ^ a b "Women POWs of Sumatra (1942–1945)". www.encyclopedia.com. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia.
- ^ a b Quadros, André de (16 August 2012). The Cambridge Companion to Choral Music. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-49339-1.
- ^ "Women, Mission and Power: The Women's Missionary Association of the Presbyterian Church of England, 1878-1972" (PDF). University of Manchester.
- ^ University, © Stanford. "Songs of survival: vocal music by women POWs". Stanford Libraries.
- ^ "Films: How to play a feisty saint in the hell of a women's prison camp". The Independent. 23 October 2011.
- ^ "Margaret Dryburgh – Seagull City". wp.sunderland.ac.uk.
- ^ Brown, Kellie D. (5 June 2020). The Sound of Hope: Music as Solace, Resistance and Salvation During the Holocaust and World War II. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-3994-9.
- ^ Hess, Lisa M. (15 September 2011). Learning in a Musical Key: Insight for Theology in Performative Mode. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-62189-095-9.
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- 1905 births
- 1989 deaths
- Singaporean conductors (music)
- British choral conductors
- People from Singapore
- Jersey musicians
- British women in World War II
- British women classical composers
- British classical composers
- British conductor (music) stubs