DESTINED TO GO THROUGH LIFE FIRST CLASS THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EDMUNDO ROS
by BILL JOHNSON
Edmundo Ros was born on 7th December 1910 in Port of Spain Trinidad at the height of British colonial rule. The Windward Isles had been a Spanish, British, Dutch, and French possession until February 1797. However, during the French Revolution, Trinidad capitulated to British force, and in 1802, following the Treaty of Amiens, it was ceded to Great Britain. In 1814, following the Napoleonic Wars, France also ceded Tobago to Britain.
CONRAD SALINGER -
M-G-M ARRaNGER SUPREME
by RICHARD HINDLEY
"What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again"
Think of a production number from one of the great MGM musicals. Whether it be Gene Kelly splashing along the sidewalk from ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse ‘Dancing in the Dark’ from ‘The Bandwagon’, or Fred with Judy Garland as a ‘Couple of Swells’ in ‘Easter Parade’, the chances are you’ll be associating these famous performers with those equally well known arrangements by Conrad Salinger. What’s interesting is that even if he hadn’t been associated with the number of your choice, it was Salinger who eventually set the defining style of the studio’s musicals, something that took place soon after the start of his 23 year career there.
Raymond Scott By Arthur Jackson
Raymond Scott isn’t merely a name from the past, and may still be fondly remembered by pre-war listeners; but how many, I wonder, realise just how enormous his talent span was, apart from the novelties like Toy Trumpet and In An Eighteenth Century Drawing Room. He wrote for Hollywood, Broadway, and radio and had his own band that featured (naturally) his own compositions as well as standards; in all, dance music of the highest quality as well as an individual brand of swing music.
EDRICH SIEBERT : Man of Brass
by PHILIP SCOWCROFT
Edrich Siebert is still, twenty years after his death, a much performed figure in the brass band world. Many of his prolific arrangements and compositions are suitable for, and are eagerly lapped up by, junior bands and their members, though others have been played and recorded by major bands.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Cyril Stapleton was a well-known orchestra leader in Britain and overseas, thanks to his regular BBC broadcasts and his many recordings. He was born on 31 December 1914 at Mapperley, Nottingham, in the east midlands of England. At the age of seven he began learning the violin, and when only 12 he made his first broadcast from 5NG, the local radio station in Nottingham. Thereafter he broadcast regularly from the BBC Studios in Birmingham, then went to Czechoslovakia to study under Sevcik, the famous teacher of the violin.
A Composer Profile by PETER WORSLEY
Yet another composer with qualities in both serious and lighter music, James Stevens fell foul of the BBC avant garde brigade and performances of his music on radio became a rarity, although he was feted abroad. He studied initially with Benjamin Frankel in his exclusive class at the Guildhall School of Music in London where he won several prestigious awards including the Royal Philharmonic Prize for his First Symphony and the Wainwright Scholarship for "composer of the year". A French Government Bursary took him across the Channel to study with Darius Milhaud at the Paris Conservatoire where he met Nadia Boulanger who made him one of her star pupils with free Saturday evening tuition. He also enjoyed an open invitation to Arthur Honegger’s classes.
Frank Tapp (1883-1953), is an almost forgotten figure in British light music, yet in some ways he was an almost classic light music man and sixty years and more ago his music was played a lot. He is credited with composing a symphony but much of his output was light orchestral. Relatively early in his career he directed the Bath Pump Room Orchestra (1910-1919) when that ensemble was larger than it is now. I suspect that his two light concert suites are worthy of revival. One, English Landmarks, comprising a waltz "Ascot", "Tintern Abbey" and the march "Whitehall" is topographical in inspiration like so many of those suites were; the other, Land of Fancy, whose three movements are "A Swing Song at Morn", "Sprite’s Lullaby" and "The Pixies’ Parade" is indeed more fanciful.
A potted biography by EDMUND WHITEHOUSE
Although not known primarily as a light music composer, Phyllis Tate is nevertheless difficult to categorise and wrote some splendid tuneful music alongside her more serious scores.
From the 1920s, until his death on 23 March 1977 at the age of 77, Billy Ternent was a highly respected figure in the British popular music scene.
He was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 10 October 1899, and is reported to have been playing the violin by the age of seven. When only twelve his first job was playing in a trio accompanying the silent films at a North Shields cinema, and four years later he was conducting a cinema orchestra on a circuit owned by the theatrical impresario George Black. Radio didn’t arrive on the scene until Billy was well into his twenties, but he soon became involved in what was to become a major part of his life. His first broadcast was with a sextet from a tea-room in his native Newcastle.
Long regarded as one of the leading figures in the field of light music, Ernest Tomlinson was born at Rawtenstall, Lancashire on September 19, 1924 into a musical family. He started composing when he was only nine, at about the same time that he became a choirboy at Manchester Cathedral, where he was eventually to be appointed Head Boy in 1939. Here, and at Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School his musical talents were carefully nurtured, and he was only 16 when he won a scholarship to Manchester University and the Royal Manchester (now Northern) College of Music. He spent the next two years studying composition, organ, piano and clarinet until, in 1943, the war effort demanded that he leave and join the Royal Air Force. Defective colour-vision precluded his being selected for aircrew and the new recruit, having his request to become a service musician turned down on the grounds that he was too healthy to follow such a career, found himself being trained as a Wireless Mechanic, notwithstanding that many of the components he was required to work with were colour-coded! (The future composer, however, was duly delighted with his assignment, which he thoroughly enjoyed and which almost certainly contributed to a later interest in electronic music). He saw service in France during 1944 and 1945, eventually returning to England where, with the cessation of hostilities, he was able to resume his studies. He finally graduated in 1947, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Music for composition as well as being made a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and an Associate of the Royal Manchester College of Music for his prowess on the King of Instruments.
