Honorary Members

June Emerson (1937)

June Emerson lives in North Yorkshire and has spent most of her life as a music publisher and distributor of music for wind instruments. As a freelance bassoon player and part-time music teacher in the 1960s she found that repertoire for wind instruments was poorly represented in general music shops, so in 1971 she founded June Emerson Wind Music, with a starting capital of £11.23. She started Emerson Edition, the publishing company, the following year, initially to expand good quality repertoire for young players.

The businesses grew rapidly and left little space for much else, but somehow she found time for solo travel and writing articles and books, visiting Egypt, Iceland, India, USA, Morocco, and most of Europe.

In 1987, by sheer chance, she visited Albania, and found a classical music scene of professionally high standard. When the communist regime fell in 1991, she founded The Albanian Musicians’ Trust, to help Albanian musicians expand their studies and activities into the UK and abroad.

In the late 1990s she attended The Painting School of Montmiral, in France. Inspired by this experience she went on to study part-time at York College. Her most recent book ‘Following the Line – a Painting Journey along the ‘Line of 2º Longitude’ was completed in 2021 and is currently raising funds for The Woodland Trust. This is her current activism to mitigate climate change.

The purpose of JEWM has always been to ‘make musicians happy.’ (Making a profit has always been lower down the list of priorities, much to the puzzlement of the accounts department!) The cheerful atmosphere in the office reflects this, and it’s a joyful place to work, with a lively and dedicated team. June’s daughter Rachel now runs both the music businesses brilliantly, and her son Daniel works in a scientific publishing house in London.

Bruce Haynes (1942–2011)

Bruce Haynes wBruce Haynes is honored for his pioneering work in the revival of the early oboe, which he boldly distinguished from its modern counterpart with the epithet hautboy. He built a legendary reputation as inspired performer, captivating performer, and provocative scholar, and the stream of his influence will last for many years. To some, it is the emotional intensity of his playing that stands out, to others it is his writings—as informative as they are thought-provoking, as critical as they are inspiring. Among his copious writings the most lasting in influence have been his detailed account of the history of the hautboy’s first century in The Eloquent Oboe, the history of performing pitch—The Story of A, and The Oboe, co-authored with Geoffrey Burgess. But Haynes’ work on musical aesthetics is equally important. The End of Early Music stimulated a reappraisal of the historically informed performance movement, and his final book, The Pathetick Musician (left incomplete at his death completed by Burgess), is a deep dive into the rhetorical interpretation of baroque music.

As a teenager in the Bay Area, Haynes studied modern oboe with Raymond Dusté. In the ‘60s he discovered the recorder, and came under the influence of Frans Brüggen. In 1972 while he was touring American universities, Brüggen invited Haynes to substitute him as recorder teacher at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague. It was at that time that Haynes started a class dedicated to baroque oboe. In Holland he worked with Gustav Leonhardt, the Kuijkens, and can be heard on the Telefunken Bach Cantata Cycle and other ground-breaking recordings with Brüggen, the Kuijkens, and La Petite Bande. He was a founding member of Brüggen’s Orkest van der Achteende Eeuw (Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century), and Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco. In later years he became a Canadian citizen, and lived in Montreal where he was a seminal figure in the burgeoning early music scene.

Bruce’s playing, research, and teaching reflected a keen interest in making sense of music: a doubly appropriate metaphor for his chosen baroque repertoire with its rich rhetorical implications. As he wrote in The End of Early Music, “a subject like music beckons us on, inviting us to keep trying, though we know we will end up with more questions than answers.” His innate inquisitiveness drew him to probe the mysteries of music and performance, to search for answers. At best, he left us with a sense of achievement—or as he put it, “happiness”—that he admitted could only ever be “mixed, momentary, and provisional.” But anyone who knew him will attest that the happiness they received from him was never compromised. Whether as teacher, colleague, or mentor, Bruce Haynes was utterly dedicated, unforgettably intelligent, and deeply caring.

Gordon Hunt (1950)

Gordon Hunt, was born in London and studied with Terence MacDonagh. Regarded as one of the world's leading oboists, for over five decades he has performed across six continents as soloist and conductor, also directing master classes and playing with renowned chamber ensembles. He is currently Principal Oboe of the London Chamber Orchestra, the Oxford Philharmonic and the World Orchestra for Peace, and formerly of the Philharmonia and London Philharmonic Orchestras. He has recorded twenty-six solo and chamber music CDs, including the Richard Strauss concerto, which the Penguin Guide named as the finest version, and was the original Gabriel’s Oboe in the film The Mission. He has been Music Director of the Danish Chamber Players and the Swedish Chamber Winds. He is Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, and a UNESCO Artist for Peace. He plays an XM oboe by Howarth of London. When not involved in music, he is passionate about nature and the environment, and fly fishing for trout and salmon.