Betty Roe

Roe received an MBE for services to Classical Music and Composition in the 2011 New Year Honours.

Her best known song is perhaps 'Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience', one of three Charles Causley settings for children's voices collected under the title Union Street in 1971). Roe herself has cited the Three Herrick Songs (1969) for soprano and wind quintet as "one of the best things I have written".

Roe married John Bishop and had three children. She was Director of Music at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from 1968–78, and founded the NorthKen Choir/Chorale/Opera in the 1960s. She founded Thames Publishing with her husband in 1970. After his death in 2000 Thames Publishing became a division of William Elkin Music Services.

Roe has composed over 300 solo songs, as well as choral and sacred music, musicals, operas, instrumental pieces, and music for schools. Malcolm Williamson admired her Magnificat and Nunc Dimitis (1962) and arranged for it to be published. Christus Victor (1964) set words by John Catterick, the Rector of Ashwell Parish Church. It prefigured the use of popular music forms in church music, and was published by Novello. Alan Ridout described it as "the next Stainer's Crucifixion".

In the 1950s Roe became involved with a drama group where she began writing for musicals. She also worked as a sessions singer with London ensembles, and in light entertainment with celebrities including Cliff Richard, Harry Secombe, Cilla Black, The Two Ronnies (with whom she appeared on television conducting "The Plumstead Ladies Male Voice Choir") and on Top of the Pops.

Betty Roe was born in North Kensington, London, England. Her father was a fishmonger at the Shepherd's Bush Market, and her mother was a bookkeeper. Roe took piano lessons from the age of six with local teacher Madam Dorina. She began writing music and arrangements in her teens during World War II when assisting with choirs at the local church. As a Junior Exhibitioner she studied piano with Fiona Addie, Muriel Dale, and Sadie MacCormack, and cello with Alison Dalrymple at the Royal Academy of Music, but left school in 1947 and took a job as a filing clerk. She continued at the Royal Academy in 1949, studying piano with York Bowen, cello with Alison Dalrymple, and voice with Jean McKenzie-Grieve. She continued her study of singing with Clive Carey, Roy Hickman, Peter van der Stolk, and Margaret Field-Hyde, and studied composition with Lennox Berkeley.

Betty Roe (born 30 July 1930) is an English composer, singer, vocal coach, and conductor.