J T Rees

John Thomas Rees was a Welsh choir conductor and composer whose work is central to understanding Welsh musical life at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was born in Cwmgiedd, near Ystradgynlais, in 1857, and died in Bow Street, in the county of Cardigan, in 1949. Before devoting himself to music, he worked for many years as a coal miner.

At birth he was christened John Morgan Rees, but he adopted the name John Thomas Rees so as not to be confused with another miner of the same name. He studied with Joseph Parry in Aberystwyth and obtained the degree of MusBac from the University of Toronto. After a brief period of teaching in the United States, he settled in 1889 in Bow Street, near Aberystwyth, where he taught music, worked as organist and choirmaster of the Y Garn chapel, composed, and wrote about music in Welsh publications. For many years he was responsible for the music section of Trysorfa'r Plant.

Although his output includes one opera and most instrumental forms, today only his hymns are remembered, among them 'Isfryn', 'Bronceiro', 'Llwynbedw', 'Salem' and 'Neuadd Las'. His most notable legacy, according to tradition, was conducting more cymanfaoedd canu than anyone else: these devotional gatherings, characteristic of Wales, bring together large groups of people who sing four-part hymns under the guidance of a conductor. In the late 1960s, his son donated copies of several of his works to the National Library of Wales.