Composer and conductor Joseph Sammut has died. He was 97.

Sammut was born in 1926 and comes from a musical family. His grandfather was an able double-bass player, and his father Vincent worked as a cellist with the Orchestra of the Commander in Chief of the Royal Navy (C-in-C), a professional classical orchestra attached to the British admiralty in Malta.

At a very young age Joseph received his initial musical training from his father. Some years later, he started studying the bassoon. Vincent used to encourage his son to study the bassoon]

At only eighteen, Joseph Sammut joined the Commander in Chief Orchestra, becoming its first bassoon player. Joseph Sammut never planned to become a conductor, but when conductor Francis Bellizzi had retired, three candidates applied and Sammut was chosen for the job at the age of 26. He tried to involve the orchestra in anything he could find, and would do anything that was required, even set up the music stands.

In 1968 as a result of rundowns in the Royal Services, the C-in-C orchestra comes to an end.

Joseph was worried not only for himself and his family but for the group of some 20 orchestra musicians who all had their families to take care of – some of them quite young.  He simply could not tell the orchestra that they were being made redundant with such short notice.

However, after heated discussions, good news arrives.

In the end, the Commander-in-Chief agreed that salaries would be paid for two more years but the orchestra was to be transferred to the Manoel Theatre and become the Manoel Theatre Orchestra.

Sammut remained in charge of the Manoel Theatre Orchestra (nowadays known as the Malta Philharmonic) for twenty-five years. From Principal Bassoonist to a conductor with the Mediterranean Fleet’s Commander-in-Chief, and the first conductor of Malta’s National Orchestra.

Sammut was also the musical director of the Chorus Melitensis between 1961 and 1978, and of the Societa Filarmonica La Valette between 1970 and 2006.

He had conducted the concert inaugurating the Aurora Opera House in Gozo in 1976 and the first ever opera in Gozo, Madama Butterfly on 7th January 1977.

He directed the Leone Band for 33 years, between 1958 and 1991.