Description
Born Birkenhead, UK, 5 July 1926, Colin Cooper left school at 16 to train as a toolmaker while studying aeronautical engineering. Conscripted into the Royal Signals in 1944, he trained as a radio operator specialising in high-speed Morse, and saw active service in Europe and the Middle East. After a moderately successful start in fiction (five published novels, numerous full-length plays for radio, one-act plays and a prizewinner for television), Colin Cooper reverted to his first love, music, a process rendered almost inevitable by his discovery of the guitar at the age of 36. His efforts to master the instrument, while leading to a total neglect of his violin, did enable him to become a guitar teacher with the Inner London Education Authority. An activity that gave him particular satisfaction was the direction of a children’s guitar orchestra. When fascinated parents asked if they could bring along their own instruments, he readily assented, even though it meant arranging parts for, in one instance, an ancient cornett. Having to balance disparate instruments in terms of volume made him realise that the conductor’s job is more difficult than it looks. A co-founder in 1972 of the monthly magazine Guitar (later Guitar International), he became in 1982 the News Editor of the new Classical Guitar magazine, later Features Editor, only in his late seventies reducing his workload to a level consistent with the title Editorial Consultant. In his time with the magazine, he has written about 1600 reviews and 300 feature articles, and has conducted well over 200 interviews. He has contributed to several other magazines, including Guitar Review, Guitar Player, and the Japanese Gendai Guitar, for which he wrote a monthly column for 15 consecutive years. He has lectured in Croatia, France, Italy, Serbia, Turkey and the Czech Republic. He has lost count of the number of international music competitions at which he has adjudicated - well over 60, not all of them exclusively guitar - but their ever-present theme, the struggle of young musicians to present themselves and their art in the best possible light, continues to be a source of interest and fascination.
