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imitate the original musical sounds of
the period. In his mid-twenties,
however, George’s voice changed,
and he became a bass while
continuing to sing with the
Westminster Cathedral Choir.
The paid singing work was part-Scottish singer and music publisher who stayed an Italian at heart
boy soprano in the local Catholic
church in Huntly in Aberdeenshire.
As word of his talent spread, George
was signed up to local competitions
and started to win prizes. Coming first
in one when he was eight, he
remembered walking back home with
the medallion so stunned by his
success that he accidentally dropped
it in the river.
After primary and secondary
school in Huntly, he went on to the
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and
Drama in Glasgow, where as a
countertenor he studied singing and
from there to London. He was taken
on by the Westminster Cathedral
Choir and became known to the
Deller Consort.
The singer Alfred Deller, often
described as “the godfather of the
countertenor”, had recently founded
the group with the aim of
popularising the return of the
countertenor voice in baroque and
renaissance music. He also liked totime, and to make ends meet George
worked a few days a week in an
administrative role for Chester Music,
which in 1960 was bought by Edition
Wilhelm Hansen, the Danish
publisher. He decided to make music-
publishing his career and, several
years later, was promoted in a single
leap to managing director by the
outgoing MD.
He stayed for 12 years at Chester
Music before moving to the same
position at Novello & Co, where he
stayed until his retirement. He was
also a leading figure in the
Performing Rights Society, the Anglo-
Austrian Society and the Music
Publishers Association.
George had met Margaret (née
Gibson) in the chorus of Aida at the
Royal Opera House, where they were
both dressed in baggy woollen tights
as Ethiopian slaves. Their friendship
developed and in 1967 they married in
the 12th-century Basilica of San
Clemente in Rome, not far from theColosseum. Margaret followed a
career as a professional singer and
went on to teach vocal studies at the
Guildhall School of Music. In 1997 she
started composing. In 1971 their
daughter Jane, who became a
sociology teacher, was born. She has
three sons.
In Sevenoaks, Kent, where George
and Margaret moved after starting
married life in Kensington and
Dulwich, George pursued a plethora
of cultural activities, joining several
organisations in the town when he
retired. He was a member of the
National Association of Decorative
and Fine Arts Societies, the
Sevenoaks music club, a poetry
group, and helped with a mobile
library service. He had a deep
Catholic faith that sustained him
throughout his life.
An Italian at heart, he loved
opera, the sun, pasta and laughter,
but preferred a gin and tonic to red
wine and sipped a glass every night.In a long career as managing director
of the music publishing houses
Novello & Co and Chester Music,
George Rizza helped to bring on
board such composers as Thea
Musgrave, John Tavener, Witold
Lutoslawski, Richard Rodney
Bennett, Judith Weir, Stephen Oliver
and Aulis Sallinen. Music was his
lifeblood — he studied and sang
as a countertenor and he was devoted
to listening, performing and
publishing music.
Born in 1925 in Dufftown in
Moray, Scotland, to James (a child
émigré from the Monte Cassino
region in Italy) and Emily (née Neri),
who ran an ice-cream and
confectionery shop, George was the
youngest of three: he had a brother
Carl and a sister Mary.
His vocal gift was discovered when
he was six, and he sang weekly as a
George Rizza, 94
George Rizza was a countertenor
before working for Chester Musicof luxury hand-carved mirrors using
mahogany from the island’s
plantations and within a few years the
company was employing 300 wood
carvers and finishers. Chris’s
relationship, both business and
personal, with Marta came to an end
and one Saturday morning he learnt
that the factory he was renting was
on fire and could not be saved.
Undeterred, he continued on his
own with the design and build of a
one million sq ft workshop complex
on a 28-acre plot and, mindful of the
Java way of life, included landscaped
grounds and areas for prayer and
relaxation. It opened in 2000 with an
increased staff of 1,400. At the same
time he expanded his portfolio to
include luxury lifestyle furniture and
rebranded the company as
Christopher Guy.
His affinity with the Java culture
and its people remained strong — he
thought little of paying for medical
care for the sick children of his
employees or retraining a worker who
went blind as a masseuse — and in
2008 he set up Java Valley in
Singapore, a technology company and
e-commerce marketplace aggregator
for the decor industry that would
benefit the crafts people of Java.
In 2016 he met his wife, Kisa Xu,
who was working at the British
Consulate in Shanghai, at the opening
of his showroom in China and they
married in Singapore two years ago.
They have a son, Kirk, and Chris has
a son from a previous relationship.
Although charming and urbane,
Chris never smoked or drank. He did
however, have a taste for fast cars,
and was the owner of Ferraris and
Lamborghinis. He had several brushes
with death: once in Malaysia when he
was driving too fast in a new
Lamborghini 560 Spyder, from which
he was dragged before it was
consumed in flames. He needed nose
and face reconstruction. And, in his
late teens, while helping his stepfather
on family cocoa and coffee
plantations off the west coast of
Africa, he was threatened with a
machete, had a tarantula creep over
him in bed and escaped with his life
from a 1979 military coup. Although
he did not reach the age of 60 he was
committed to living his life fully.and met Marta Gallego, who became
his girlfriend. Similarly motivated, she
partnered him in selling reproduction
Chippendale furniture made in
Indonesia, and they did well. Noticing
one day the exquisitely designed
Italian mirrors in a top-end Madrid
interiors store, Chris decided to
manufacture similar at a lower cost
without sacrificing quality by using
Indonesian craftsmen. He proclaimed
that his aim was to make “the finest
mirrors in the world”.
The couple enthusiastically headed
to Java, where Chris bought raw
materials from a market and with his
amateur tools tinkered with them in
his hotel bedroom to explore the
finishes he was aiming for.
It was the start of Harrison & Gil, a
successful worldwide export businessChristopher Guy Harrison started out in property development before selling
reproduction Chippendale furniture made in Indonesia. Left, his Chris-x chairMalaga, Sylvia remarried, and all four
returned to live in Portsmouth, where
Chris became head boy at Portchester
School in Fareham near by.
It was through a house-building
project of his mother and step-father
in Taradeau in the south of France
when he was 17 that Chris felt the
stirrings of a vocation in design when
he helped in its construction. Out of
his earnings he bought a secondhand
printing machine for £50 and set up a
pop-up shop on the coast in Juan les
Pins selling printed T-shirts.
Having enjoyed his first taste of
business he moved into property
development in Bournemouth, but
irked by the early 1990s crash in
London started to look to Europe.
He set off to Madrid with a single
suitcase in his Fiat 124 Sport SpiderOpulent one-off mirrors, taut high
wingback chairs, tightly tailored
monochrome stretch-limo sofas —
the elegant designs of Christopher
Guy were familiar products in the
film industry, and have featured on
some of the most glamorous sets: the
casino in Casino Royale, the New York
townhouse of
Miranda
Priestly in
The Devil
Wears Prada
and the palace
settings in The
Crown.
Working always at
the luxury end,
Christopher was
known for taking a
classical style and
giving it a twist — “a
certain Chanel or
Dior-esque spirit,” he
said — satisfying a
clientele that will spend
into the thousands on a
sofa. His signature piece
is the Chris-x
(pronounced criss-
cross) chair. Inspired
by the ankles-croisé
pose of a ballerina
and the waistline of Scarlett O’Hara
in Gone with the Wind, the chair’s
back legs overlap to form an “x”.
Where Chris gained the edge in
business was in his understanding of
Furniture
designer for
007 interiors
and the Savoy
the international market. With offices
across the globe, from Beverly Hills to
Singapore, he knew the style that
would please the owners of the luxury
apartments of Riyadh as much as
those in Toronto.
The seeds were sown in his teenage
years, when he lived in the south of
France and would walk the five miles
along the coast to observe the
glamour of the promeneurs and
buildings of La Croisette in Cannes,
such as the turn-of-the-century Hotel
Carlton. Theirs was a lifestyle that
appealed to him and he would go on
to design the interiors of several
luxury hotels, among them the
Beverly Hills in California, the Savoy
in London, the Georgian restaurant in
Harrods and numerous hotels in Las
Vegas. He received several
international awards but was proudest
of being the 2011 Design Icon
from the Las Vegas
Design Center
and for
receiving an
honorary
doctorate from
Las Vegas’s
Otis College of
Art and Design.
Born in 1960,
Chris spent his
early years in
the rural
setting of Co Durham, where his
father, Anthony, farmed. His parents
separated when he was five and by
the age of seven he was living with his
mother, Sylvia, and his brother,
Richard, in Las Palmas in the
Canaries. They soon moved toChristopher Guy
Harrison, 59
Remembering loved ones
If you would like to commemorate
the life of a relative, friend orcolleague, call 020 7782 5583 to
discuss the content and cost, or
email: [email protected].
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