Carys Môn Hughes

1949 - 2004

The following is the tribute paid by Kenneth Bowen at the Funeral Service in Eastcastle Street Chapel and re-printed in The London Welsh Magazine Dec 2004.

CARYS MÔN HUGHES - a truly remarkable lady

 It is a privilege and an honour to pay tribute for the life and work of Carys Hughes as an organist.

Carys was born in 1949 in Holyhead where her father the late Rev. R. Gwilym Hughes was minister of Hyfrydle Chapel. She first studied with W. Bradwen Jones, composer of that fine anthem ‘Molwch yr Arglwydd’ which Carys played so often and splendidly in performances of it by the London Welsh Chorale.

She studied later with Dr. Leslie Paul, for many years the organist of St. David’s Cathedral Bangor. After schooling in Mold and Pwhlelli she entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1967 where she was taught by the distinguished organ Professor Douglas Hawkridge. She gained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists in 1972. Critical acclaim followed rapidly and she gave a recital at Westminster Cathedral, which was broadcast on Radio 3.

As holder of the W.T. Best Memorial Scholarship she continued her studies in Paris with Marie-Madelaine Duruflé and Andre Marchal. She was awarded the Noel Guy Memorial Award and in 1981 was elected A.R.A.M. — Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.

She embarked on an extremely busy and successful career as an organist giving recitals in many prestigious venues. The list is long and impressive; Bangor Cathedral, Beverley Minster, the cathedrals of Canterbury, Coventry, Derby, Durham, Exeter, Salisbury St. Asaph, St. David’s, St. Paul’s, Kings College and St. John’s College, Cambridge, New College Oxford, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral.

She played at the following concert halls: the Albert Hall Nottingham, Bangor University, Birmingham Town Hall, the Brangwyn Hall Swansea, Eton College, the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, Leeds Town Hall, Oxford Town Hall, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, the Sheldon Theatre in Oxford, Southampton Civic Hall, St. David’s Hall Cardiff, St. George’s Hall Liverpool, the Ulster Hall Belfast and Wolverhampton Civic Hall.

Carys also played in Europe and the United States and she was a familiar figure at the famous Willis Organ in the Royal Albert Hall accompanying over thirty concerts including the big Male Voice Choir festivals and several St. David’s Day concerts.

Since I became conductor of the London Welsh Chorale in 1983 Carys played for every one of our concerts requiring an organist. She accompanied us on our tours to Italy, Vienna, Budapest and Prague, Stockholm and to Brittany where she had a cottage; her bolt-hole when she needed to switch off.

She became organist of Castle Street Welsh Baptist Chapel and on a Sunday in January this year, shortly before the evening service, she fell. Tests followed and she was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma - bone marrow cancer.

Since then most of her time was spent in hospital, mostly at the Middlesex and at University College Hospital where she died. But on May 15 she found the strength to play for six hours when the Chorale completed the recording of our CD for Sain.. (Jenny Trew had accompanied the piano items the previous evening).

This was a remarkable and truly magnificent effort by Carys and when the CD appears in a few weeks it will be a fitting memorial to Carys’s technical skill on the organ, her innate musicianship and her great courage and good humour in the face of adversity.

During her long and cruel illness I never heard a word of complaint from her and I cannot praise her bravery too highly. A truly remarkable lady.

Our deepest condolences are extended to her mother and brothers and their families at this time.

This tribute to Carys was written on behalf of The London Welsh Chorale by Kate Burton and appeared in  The London Welsh Magazine Dec 2004

To Carys - from the London Welsh Chorale

 As I prepared to write a piece for this publication I received the news that we had recently expected but dreaded. I decided that a catalogue of the Chorale’s recent exploits and achievements could be passed over on this occasion in order to pay tribute to Carys Hughes.

A friend to the wider London Welsh community, a friend to the choirs, and a dear personal friend to so many of us, Carys will be sadly missed. We have many happy memories to treasure. Looking back at concert programmes over the years it becomes clear how much she did for the London Welsh Chorale.

So, remembering Carys.

On tour in Vienna, Prague and Budapest. The experience for Carys must have fully encompassed the meaning of ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous’.

Perhaps we should start with the ridiculous - few of us will forget the expression on Carys’s face before one concert in the Czech Republic when the ‘organ’ (wheezing old harmonium would have been a much better description) arrived at the church on the back of a small truck. It was a great test and a testament to her consummate skill that she was able to produce a sound that we could sing to. And so to the sublime - at the Matthias Church in Budapest her expression was quite different as she examined the ‘state of the art’ console of a fine modern organ on which she was able to demonstrate her artistry to the full.

A wonderful concert in Brittany, a country she adopted, and which adopted her. An abiding memory I have of that time was seeing her from behind the scenes. It is not often that the audience has the opportunity to see the organist from this position. The memory of her fingers flying and her feet dancing on the pedals to produce the enchanting music of the ‘Carillon de Westminster’ is one that I will always treasure.

Another memory, of a concert in Gray’s Inn Chapel. I wrote a piece for the London Welshman. In an attempt to be concise I wrote that the Chorale was ‘ably accompanied’ by Carys Hughes. I can still hear her outraged cry when next I saw her - ‘Ably accompanied....’. No of course, dear Carys, ‘brilliantly accompanied’ would have been so much more accurate.

Last year, in Brittany yet again, this time with my family. We went to a concert in Fouesnant - a small Breton town. The organ was newly refurbished and Carys took centre stage as a solo performer. It was a scintillating evening and so enthusiastically received by the audience, with her many local friends and others filling the church.

And most recently of all, how will any of us ever forget our CD recording in May. The CD will be a lasting tribute to a wonderful person and a brilliant musician.

And so we prepare to go to Paris at the end of the month. We shall be without Carys, but we will carry her with us in our hearts and thoughts.

So goodbye to dear Carys who was to so many of us ‘ever the best of friends’.

Kate Burton. October 2004