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The English boy soprano, Raymond Kinsey, joined the choir of St Philip's aged 8. After winning a silver cup at the Blackpool Festival in 1932 he made six records for HMV between January and September 1933, but the early breaking of his voice later that year curtailed his career as a boy soprano. His life is sketched in more detail in Stephen Beet's book The Better Land (2005). Raymond died in 1997.
Herman Klein wrote in The Gramophone (December 1933), "There is in this boy's voice a dark, rich colour and a beauty of texture that are quite exceptional. The same adjective applies to his breath-control, the evenness of his scale, the depth and maturity of his expressive power. His style is characterized by a degree of natural feeling that has the similitude of passion which we know cannot be real in a boy, but which evidently induces his teacher to give him songs that call for strong underlying emotion..." |
