Gordon Day

Day, Gordon

Gordon (Hugh) Day. Flutist, b Toronto 16 Oct 1914, d near Millbrook, Ont, 19 Jun 1962. After playing clarinet and saxophone with a country music band, Billy Hole and the Livewires, in Toronto, he led his own dance band, the Rhythm Knights, and in 1935 joined Horace Lapp's orchestra. He began playing flute with the Lapp orchestra in 1937 and studied with William Kincaid in Philadelphia that same year. He was a member of the RCN Band stationed in Toronto during World War II and served as principal flute in the Promenade Symphony Concerts and 1941-8 in the TSO. His CBC radio show 'Flavoured with Flute' in the late 1940s was heard throughout the USA on the MBS network.

Gordon Day also played in many radio and studio orchestras, including Chicho Valle's Cubanos and, 1953-62, the CBC Symphony Orchestra. He was a member of the CBC Woodwind Quintet and a founder in 1955 of the Toronto Woodwind Quintet. One of Canada's leading flutists for more than 20 years, Day premiered William McCauley'sFive Miniatures for Flute and Strings and Morris Surdin'sSoftly as the Flute Blows, and recorded Weinzweig'sDivertimento No. 1 with the CBC SO (1958, RCI 182/ACM 1).

The trumpeter Bob Day was his son.