He knew that the College wanted a bass clarinet, in those days they were few and far between, and he arranged an audition for me with Charles Draper. I did not like to take along my own bass clarinet, now the second one I had owned, a handsome but rather ramshackle Italian one, Boehm system - so I borrowed one for the occasion from the Ernest Read Senior Orchestra. For the audition I only played a few bars of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and a couple of scales on the bass; the instrument was what they were after so I was awarded an Exhibition giving me free tuition. I had my foot in the door, it was 1931 and I was already twenty-two years old. << less