Jones, Sidney (EN)

Jones James Sidney, *17 June 1861 London, †29 I 1946 London, English composer. He performed in Leeds as a clarinettist in various orchestral ensembles conducted by his father, J. Sidney Jones (1838–1914). In the 1890s, he was a conductor at the Prince of Wales Theatre, and from 1905 at the Empire Theatre in London. He abandoned his compositional activities, which lasted about 20 years, after 1916, remaining forgotten for the rest of his life.

Jones was the most prominent representative of English musical comedy after Gilbert and Sullivan. Depending on the degree of libretto content, his works were labelled as “musical comedy” (Gaiety Girl), “comedy opera” or “musical play’” (The Geisha). He was gifted with a sense of humour and wonderful melodic inventiveness, as evidenced by, among others, the arias The Amorous Goldfish and The Toy Monkey from The Geisha, his most famous work, comparable in popularity to A. Sullivan’s The Mikado.