Berersford King-Smith obituary
BERESFORD KING-SMITH (1931-2021)
Beresford King-Smith, who died earlier this week at the age of 90, was an employee and chronicler of the CBSO for half of the Orchestra's entire history. Born near Bath in 1931, he left the family paper business to join the CBSO's management in January 1964. By the time he retired, in January 2014, he had served the Orchestra as Concert Manager, Deputy Chief Executive and latterly Honorary Archivist for an unprecedented (and unsurpassed) 50 years.
Beresford joined the CBSO under the conductorship of Hugo Rignold, and took a hands-on role in the running of the orchestra from his very first day - fixing and managing the musicians, as well as organising extensive tours in Europe, both East and West of the Iron Curtain: a formidable task in an era before email or fax. Beresford handled the situation when Rignold was briefly arrested by Soviet border guards as a suspected spy during the 1968 Czechoslovakia tour, and negotiated with Yugoslavian