Having A Hand In It

Eric Wetherell led a varied and rewarding career. After his student days at Oxford and the Royal College of Music, he became an orchestral horn player for various orchestras. In the late 50s he was a repetiteur with the Royal Opera House where he worked closely with Britten, Solti, Giulini, Sargent and Kempe whom he admired above all.
As assistant musical director with Welsh National Opera he worked on most of the large grand operas. At the first performance by the Welsh National Opera in Bristol in 1968, Eric conducted 'Rigoletto'. Ken Loveland (The Times) wrote "Eric Wetherell's conducting, tense, tightly controlled, and completely informed about all the dramatic stresses which make this Italian opera's first really great score, was a foundation on which a convincing stage performance could grow..." (Eric was invited to the WNO's 50th anniversary production at the Bristol Hippodrome in 2018).
During his time as principal conductor of the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra and senior producer for BBC Radio 3 in the South West, he was in the position to play an enormous range of music from light classics and jazz to Haydn and Strauss within a single recording session.

A lover of film all his life, he extended his composition skills to writing film music, in particular when he was Musical Director for Harlech Television in Wales and the South West. He went on to produce short films which he edited himself, and film scripts based on subjects that held a great interest for him.

An excellent and enthusiastic jazz man, he led two jazz orchestra in South Wales and, later, in Bristol. He also enjoyed playing as part of a jazz quartet, particularly enjoying the informality of pub gigs.

His love of humour and his many anecdotes, often true stories from his professional career, endeared him to the many people he came in contact with.