Lilian Elkington

Iris Lilian Mary Elkington (15 September 1900 – 13 August 1969) was an English pianist and composer. She studied piano, organ and composition (with Sir Granville Bantock) at the Birmingham and Midland School of Music and began her musical career as a pianist, performing piano concertos and solo pieces at Birmingham Town Hall and in Bournemouth and Harrogate. Howard Carr conducted a second performance 15 months later, on 21 December 1922 in Harrogate. During the 1920s it was played fairly often around the Midlands area.

Marriage By 1924 she had formed a duo with the violist and violinist Arthur Kennedy, whom she met while studying in Birmingham. A pupil of Rowsby Woof at the Royal Academy of Music, Kennedy later played with various BBC orchestras. After her marriage to Kennedy in August 1926 she gradually withdrew from both composing and performing, except as a local church musician. She made occasional appearances in BBC radio broadcasts of recitals from Birmingham between 1925 and 1929, including a performance of works by Liszt, Chabrier, Chopin and Dohnanyi in April 1926. She was organist at the Sacred Heart Church in Aston (where she was also married), at Abbey Church in Erdington, and was organist and choir director in Sutton Coldfield. to Ridge House, Groveside Great Bookham in Surrey, and then in 1954 they moved again to East Horsley. There was a son and a daughter, Mary Williams. The only surviving manuscripts are those that were rediscovered in the 1970s by the musicologist David J Brown at a bookshop in Worthing. The manuscripts he found included the full score and orchestral parts of Out of the Mist, two pieces for violin and piano (Rhapsody, op.1 and Romance, op. 3), and a song Little Hands (words S J J Wise).

The first modern performance of Out of the Mist was given at Eton School Hall by the Windsor Sinfonia, conducted by Robert Tucker, on 24 September 1988. It was first recorded in 2006 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Lloyd Jones.