Cecil Smith, retired Head of Music at Sandys Secondary School and organist at St
Paul’s AME Church grew up in a musical family. His father, pilot Christopher Cecil
“Tapping” Smith, was appointed organist of Vernon Temple before he was born.
When Cecil was a young boy, the church organ required two people to take turns
pumping the bellows full of air and playing the instrument. Cecil vividly
remembers one occasion when Mr. Raynor was pumping and his father was
playing the hymn “How Sweet our Prayer.”
“I was so excited I knew that hymn, I nudged my father off his chair.”
His older brother and sister were taking piano lessons. Cecil desperately wanted
to take them too but was considered far too young. He begged to have them so
persistently he was eventually allowed to cycle to piano teacher Mrs Albert
Simons one Thursday afternoon to tell her, “You can teach me! You can teach
me!” Within a year of piano lessons from Mrs. Simons, he surpassed his siblings
and soon she had to tell him, “I’ve taught you all I know.”
By then he was at Southampton East Primary School (Now Heron Bay) whose
principal of the time, Mrs. Brown, noticed Cecil’s interest in the piano. She
arranged for him to have lessons with Mr. Joseph Richards, who was music
teacher at the Berkeley Institute and who had a music studio in Hamilton. He
normally did not take children as private students but at Mrs Brown’s
encouragement, he gave Cecil lessons for the next ten years. As a result, Cecil
worked through the Royal School of Music exams until he received his Grade
Seven in piano and theory. At the same time, once he became a high school
student at the Berkeley Institute, he came involved with the school’s choir and
played piano for early morning assemblies. He also accompanied the St. Paul’s
AME Choir on the organ, the transition from piano to organ playing being easy for
Thanks to Mr. Richards who exposed him to different composers of music for
piano and organ, Cecil acquired a deep enjoyment for choral and classical music,
in particular for hymns and anthems and the music of Handel, Bach, Mozart and
Chopin.
Once he graduated from Berkeley with his Cambridge Certificate, Cecil spent the
next four years attending Wilberforce University where he majored in music,
eventually gaining a Bachelor of Science in Education. His music teacher, Dr. H.
Brockington, encouraged Cecil to undertake further study at his own alma mater
Michigan State. This Cecil did, earning a Master’s degree in Music Education,
specialising in choir and organ.
1961 was a very good, and a very busy year for Cecil – for three reasons: He
graduated in June, got married to his school sweetheart, Avery Jones, in August,
and became Sandys Secondary School’s first music teacher in September. Head of
Music from the start, he formed junior and senior choirs and began his lifelong
love of teaching. Through Cecil’s leadership, the Sandys Secondary Choir won the
prize for the interschool choral competition and was the only school to participate
in a Christmas concert organised by Leslie Betteridge, conductor of the Bermuda
Philharmonic Society’s chorus and orchestra.
Sandys Secondary should have a band, he thought, and so returned to Michigan
State in 1971 to take an instrumental programme to enable his familiarity with
woodwind, stringed and brass instruments. After he returned, he formed the
school’s first band.
On Cecil’s return from his studies in 1961, he was also appointed assistant
organist of St. Paul’s and was put in charge of the choir, which became during the
1980s one of the top church choirs on the island. Once organist Mrs Doris Corbin
retired in 1985, he took over the position while she took over the choir.
One fateful morning at school during the morning recess one student ran up to
Cecil and said, “The Police are looking for you!”
However, fortunately there was no crime involved. Commissioner Fred “Penny”
Bean and Westmore Bean wanted to start a police male choir and they came to
the school to ask Cecil to direct it. And so the choir was formed, becoming very
popular all over the island. For years they were invited to sing at weddings and
funerals, their music being a combination of pop and classical. Christmas was a
particularly busy time since on Christmas Eve and on Christmas morning they
would sing carols at hotels, as well as the Packwood and Lefroy House rest homes.
In 1975 they sang for the Queen at a banquet held at the Southampton Princess.
The Bermuda Police Choir also performed abroad, in Washington and in New
York.
In 1979 Cecil went to Buckingham Palace with his mother, Pauline Smith, his wife
Avery and his daughter Renée to receive from the Queen his MBE, awarded for
his work with the Police Choir.
Thanks to Cecil’s dedication to teaching and conducting choral music, generations
of Bermudians have had their experience broadened through exposure to music.
