The 'Why' In the beginning Going to RAM The career begins The swan song The career ends For Jane At the end

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Another ‘Old Kitchen’ favourite was

Silent Worship - George Frederick Handel

Harvey accompanied by Mike Dixon

The career ends


I left the Royal Academy of Music clutching my LRAM. I became a ‘call boy’!!! - for the The Carl Rosa Opera 1960/61 UK Tour. After a year climbing up and down the stairs of most of England’s finest repertory theatres calling singers to the stage I signed a year’s contract to teach in primary dcuation for the Kent Education Service… …and so ended my professional singing career in 1961. I entered full time teaching in Primary Education in 1961 and thereafter I sang as an amateur in many ‘Amdram’ productions from The Pirates of Penzance to the first amateur performance of the Bizet’s Pearlfishers in which I sang in the famous baritone and tenor duet. I also remember dying in Gounod’s Faust that took my character 68 pages of music score for me to die on the floor. But I found I could do that easily – so my training with Bruce Boyce finally paid off! You are to be spared any tracks from these shows as well as any from the many oratorios I performed with great joy in a purely amateur capacity. So we go back to the ‘old kitchen’ – a room in Church House West Malling, my mother-in-law’s house where the family seemed to spend a lot of our time singing all our favourite songs round the piano and an old harmonium with James (Jane’s brother) and the local organist Alec Briggs accompanying. This piece of indulgent memorabilia ends with some of the songs I had learned in my years at the Royal Academy which are not so often heard today but were well loved 40 or so years ago. I hoped to show Jane, now my fiancée and her family that I had learned something the the Royal Academy other that how to carry a cello around for a certain lady cellist! I remember that one favourite song at this time was Michael Head’s ‘Sweet Chance That Led My Steps Abroad’

Sweet Chance That Led My Steps Abroad  - Michael Head

Harvey with Mike Dixon at the piano