Betty Roe MBE (1930-2026), who has died at the age of 95, was a celebrated English composer, teacher, organist, singer and conductor. She took piano lessons from the age of six and started writing music and arranging for local choirs in her teens. She studied piano, cello and voice at the Royal Academy of Music, and a rich and varied musical career followed. She composed over 300 songs alongside musicals, operas, instrumental works, and choral and sacred music, and also worked as a session singer and in light entertainment with performers such as Cliff Richard and Cilla Black, and on Top of the Pops. One of the comic highlights from 1975 can still be found on YouTube: Betty conducting ‘The Plumstead Ladies Male Voice Choir’ on The Two Ronnies.  

With her husband, John Bishop, she founded Thames Publishing, treasured by musicians for its catalogue of British music, and closely connected with the Association of English Singers and Speakers (now WordSong) with whom it developed anthologies of English Song.

As a great supporter of the AESS Betty is close to the heart of many of our members. Their most immediate memories are of her ready – and often wicked – sense of humour. She is remembered playing the musical saw with a perfectly straight face while her audience collapsed in laughter, and a fellow festival adjudicator recalls her whispering about one earnest tenor, ‘Don’t you think he looks like a fish?’  In fact fish played a large part in her life; her father was a fishmonger at Shepherd’s Bush Market –  a source of family pride – and Betty loved, and was amused by, the fact that their name was, appropriately, Roe.

Betty Roe was a much-loved friend and supporter. We celebrate her long and active life and send our condolences to her family.

____________
Contribution by WordSong Trustees, including Caroline Richards, Pat Williams, Nicola Harrison & Lynda Morgan