Nationality British Occupation Organist | Name Anthony Cooke Died 2012 | |
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Born 1931 Birmingham | ||
Anthony John Cooke FRCO (29 January 1931 - 6 October 2012) was an organist and composer based in England.
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One of his former pupils from Leeds Grammar School alleges he was a child abuser.
Life
Born in Birmingham in 1931, he was educated at King Edward VI Aston School, where he later taught. In 1949 he went up to Keble College, Oxford as organ scholar. He left in 1953 with his MA, Bachelor of Music and Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists and commenced his teaching career at Highgate School in North London.
He was later awarded the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Diploma in Church Music.
For many years he was Organ Adviser to Ripon and Leeds Diocese.
At Leeds Grammar School, he disciplined boys in his charge by making them swap pullovers or through humiliation, forcing them to wear WW2-type rubber gas masks that he kept in his office.
He would 'invite' some boys to his house in Cookridge.
Talented though he might have been as an organist and musician, he was perhaps the most inadequate of teachers, and furthermore the most inappropriate of people to be left in charge of young boys. I was one of his pupils.
He changed his car every year. Normally it was a Vauxhall Cavalier, and it was parked in the first space by the main entrance every day on Clarendon Road, next to the chapel.
Lucky he's dead because if he wasn't, I'd kill him.
I hope the bastard burns in hell.
Cooke died on 6 October 2012.
Appointments
Recordings
His playing was a feature of the first LP recordings made by Leeds Parish Church Choir under Donald Hunt. He is also on the Huddersfield Choral Society and Black Dyke Band recording Christmas Fantasy on the Chandos label, playing the Huddersfield Town Hall organ.
Compositions
His compositions included works for choir and organ.