{{Short description|British clarinettist (1925 – 2007)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2025}} {{Use British English|date=July 2015}} {{Infobox musical artist <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Musicians --> | honorific_prefix = Dame | name = Thea King | honorific_suffix = DBE FRCM FGSM | image = | caption = | image_size = | background = non_vocal_instrumentalist | birth_date = {{birth date|df=y|1925|12|26}} | birth_place = Hitchin, Hertfordshire | death_date = {{Death date and age|2007|6|26|1925|12|26|df=y}} | death_place = London, England | instrument = Clarinet | genre = Classical | years_active = 1950s&ndash;2007 }}

'''Dame Thea King''' DBE FRCM FGSM (26 December 1925 &ndash; 26 June 2007) was a British clarinettist.

==Biography==

===Early life=== Thea King was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, the daughter of Henry Walter Mayer King, the manager of his family engineering business, and Dorothea (née Hass).<ref name="obit">[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2007/06/30/db3001.xml ''Daily Telegraph'' Obituary]{{dead link|date=July 2021|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}, accessed 30 June 2007</ref> She was educated at Bedford High School and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music where she studied the piano with Arthur Alexander and the clarinet with Frederick Thurston.<ref name="dnb">{{cite book | last1=Weston | first1=Pamela | last2=Philip | first2=Robert | title=Oxford Music Online | chapter=King, Thea | publisher=Oxford University Press | year=2001 | doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.15022 }} {{subscription required}}</ref> In January 1953 she married Frederick Thurston but he died from lung cancer in December of the same year. She never remarried.<ref name="obit"/>

===Career=== <!-- Deleted image removed: thumb|right|250px|Jury of the Jeunesses Musicales International Competition in Belgrade (1987) --> She worked as soloist, chamber musician and as a teacher but was probably associated most closely with the English Chamber Orchestra as principal clarinet from 1964 to 1999. She also worked with the London Mozart Players, succeeding Gervase de Peyer as principal clarinettist, the Sadler's Wells Opera Orchestra, the Melos Ensemble and the Allegri String Quartet. She was a founder member in 1953 of the Portia Wind Ensemble, an all female group.<ref name="obit"/>

Thea King made a special study of lesser known works of the 18th and 19th centuries, especially those of Crusell.<ref name="dnb"/> She commissioned Elizabeth Maconchy's ''Fantasia'' and Howard Blake's ''Clarinet Concerto''.<ref name="obit"/> Compositions dedicated to her by British composers include Benjamin Frankel's ''Clarinet Quintet'' (which she recorded in 1991, helping revive interest in the then neglected composer)<ref>Kennaway, E.D.: [https://www.jstor.org/stable/965847?seq=1 "Benjamin Frankel: A Forgotten Legacy"], in ''Musical Times'', February 1992, pp. 69–70</ref> and Gordon Jacob's ''Mini Concerto''.<ref name="dnb"/>

From 1961 to 1987, she was Professor of Clarinet at the Royal College of Music and she was a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 1988 until her death. She was a Fellow of both institutions.

Thea King was made an OBE in 1985 and was appointed a DBE in 2001.<ref name="dnb"/>

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *[https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/a.asp?a=A136 Hyperion Records]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:King, Thea}} Category:1925 births Category:2007 deaths Category:Academics of the Royal College of Music Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Music Category:English classical clarinetists Category:Women clarinetists Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Musicians awarded knighthoods Category:People from Hitchin Category:Musicians from London Category:Honorary members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:People educated at Bedford High School, Bedfordshire Category:Musicians from Hertfordshire Category:20th-century British clarinetists Category:21st-century British clarinetists Category:20th-century British classical musicians Category:21st-century British classical musicians Category:20th-century English women musicians Category:21st-century English women musicians Category:20th-century English musicians Category:21st-century English musicians