The Times (London), April 9, 1999

   Ruth Gipps, MBE, composer and conductor, died on February 23 aged 78.
   She was born in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, on February 20, 1921.

   AS THE first woman to conduct at the Festival Hall, and as founder
   of the London Repertoire training orchestra, Ruth Gipps - or "Wid"
   as she was almost universally known - was an inspiration to generations
   of budding musicians and composers, men and women alike.

   Formed in 1955, the London Repertoire was aimed both at young would-be
   musicians and at out-of-work orchestral players, with the aim of
   cultivating a high standard of playing and sight-reading.  "Double
   basses, are you sure that A is meant to be natural?" she would boom
   out over her all-male orchestra.

   Her Chanticleer Orchestra, which she founded in 1961, won her much
   acclaim and performed many times on the South Bank.  With both of her
   orchestras she regularly promoted the works of 20thcentury British
   composers and gave opportunities to young soloists in need of their
   first break; among them were the singer Jane Highfield, the cellists
   Alexander Baillie and Julian Lloyd Webber and the violinist Jose Luis
   Garcia.

   Born into a musical family - her Swiss mother was a pianist and ran
   a music school at their home in Bexhill - Ruth Dorothy Louisa Gipps
   insisted on being allowed to play the piano as soon as she could reach
   the keys.  At the age of four she made her public debut in London, and
   at eight she published her first composition The Fairy Shoemaker.  At
   16 she went to the Royal College of Music, where her teachers included
   Gordon Jacob, Vaughan Williams and Leon Goossens.  In 1942 Sir Henry
   Wood conducted her Knight in Armour at the Last Night of the Proms.

   She was for several years first oboe and cor anglais player with the
   City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, as well as being chorus director
   of the City of Birmingham Choir and conductor of the Co-op Orchestra and
   Listener's Club Choir.  It was while at Birmingham that she realised she
   would have to abandon her hoped-for career as a piano soloist; an old
   childhood injury to her shoulder was giving her trouble with her right
   hand.

   On returning to London in 1954 she started working as a guest conductor.
   Despite the resistance she encountered, Gipps became the first woman to
   conduct the all-male London Symphony Orchestra (in 1957).  She later
   conducted her own Third Symphony for a BBC broadcast.

   Her strength lay in her enthusiasm.  Never one to sit around waiting for
   the masses to come to her, she took classical music to the people, in
   the form of lunchtime concerts and in evening classes; and when she
   conducted, it was usually from memory, even with such works as Sir
   Arthur Bliss's Colour Symphony.

   She taught counterpoint and musical history at Trinity College, then the
   Royal College of Music and, finally, became Co-Principal at Gypsy Hill.
   She was made chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain in 1967,
   the year in which the guild opened the British Music Information Centre
   in Stratford Place in Central London, now a treasure trove of British
   20thcentury compositions.

   After retiring from the London Repertoire in 1986, Gipps taught herself
   to play the organ.  She also became musical director of the Heathfield
   Choral Society, near her home in East Sussex.  In 1988 she conducted a
   well-received concert of music by women composers of the past 300 years
   at St John's, Smith Square.

   In 1981 she was appointed MBE for her services to music.  She is survived
   by her husband of 57 years, Robert Baker, a former clarinettist, and by
   their son.

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