At 5 pm there's a
two hour tribute to Andy Williams
hosted by Jimmy Osmond.
At 7 there's a
repeat of a Friday Night Is Music
Night celebration of Frank
Sinatra with the BBC Big Band and
singers Liane Carroll, Claire
Martin and Ian Shaw. The interval
feature is a celebration (by
saxophonist and rising Radio 3
presenter Jess Gillam) of Ol'
Blue Eyes' arrangers - Nelson
Riddle, Don Costa Gordon Jenkins
and Billy May.
At 9 in his
excellent series The People's
Songs Stuart Maconie recalls
Winifred Atwell's Coronation
Rag and the music of 1953.
At 10 there's
Clare Teal as usual and at 11 Don
Black - in his final series for
Radio 2 - includes a tribute to
master lyricist Gus Kahn.
Tell your friends!
Regards Anthony
Wills
PS. There's a
letter in next week's Radio Times
regretting the departure of Don
Black and making a plea for Our
Kind Of Music to continue to be
represented on the network.
July 2020
RIP Johnny
& Annie
We have lost two
major figures in Our Kind Of
Music in the space of a month.
The arranger
Johnny Mandel died on 29th June
aged 94. He worked with all the
greats including Frank Sinatra,
Peggy Lee, Barbra Streisand, Tony
Bennett and Natalie Cole. He also
wrote The Shadow Of Your Smile
and the Theme from Mash.
And Annie Ross of
Lambert, Hendricks and Ross (and
sister of Jimmy Logan) died in
New York last week aged 89, four
days short of her 90th birthday.
She was born in Mitcham (Surrey)
in 1930.
Anthony
Wills
July 2020
Don
Black's final series starts on
BBC Radio 2
On Sunday 12th
July, Don Black began what he
announced would be his final
series in the form of 13 new
programmes in the former
"David Jacobs slot" on
BBC Radio 2 (11 pm - midnight).
Obituary by Chris
O'Reilly on Presto Classical
website
The Oscar-winning
Italian composer, who wrote over
400 film scores and around 100
concert works, has died in Rome
aged 91.
Morricone was born
in Rome in 1928, and received his
first music-lessons from his
father Mario, a professional
trumpet-player; as an
undergraduate at the Accademia
Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the
trumpet was initially Ennio's
first study, but following
postgraduate work with Goffredo
Petrassi (to whom he would later
dedicate his Concerto for
Orchestra) his focus shifted to
composition and arrangement.
Throughout the
1950s, Morricone worked as a jazz
musician and an arranger for
Italian radio and television, as
well as ghost-writing for cinema.
His first big-screen success in
his own right came in 1961, when
he composed the score for Lucian
Salce’s Il federale;
Morricone and Salce went on to
work together on films including
Crazy Desire (1962), El Greco
(1963), and How I Learned to Love
Women (1966) as well as on
several projects for the theatre.
It is our
sad duty to record the deaths of
two more former members of the
Robert Farnon Society, both of
which have occurred during the
last few months.
John White
was a regular attendee at RFS and
then LLMMG meetings. By
profession a Group Manager for
London Underground, latterly at
Kings Cross Station, John passed
away at West Middlesex Hospital
in December 2019, having
unfortunately suffered two
strokes. He was a great devotee
of Frank Sinatra and possessed a
huge collection of recordings of
the latter. He would be seen
taking copious notes throughout
our meetings and was always on
the lookout for new CDs that
interested him.
Ralph
Thompson will be
remembered by many for his video
recordings of RFS meetings,
particularly those which had
taken place on special occasions.
A civil engineer in professional
life, Ralph had a number of
interests, including photography
and videography, cycling and old
London buses, in addition to
Light Music and record
collecting. Regrettably, he had
suffered kidney failure towards
the end of 2019 and died during
February of this year.
Another of our
supporters, Peter Luck, was a
friend of both John and Ralph,
and we are obliged to Peter for
providing this information.
Tony Clayden
June 2020
Vera Lynn
[1917-2020]
The cover of Radio
Pictorial - August 1938
One of the most
highly regarded figures in the
world of entertainment during
World War II - and for many years
thereafter – has finally
left us after an amazingly long
life of 103 years.
Dame Vera, the
Forces’ Sweetheart, captured
the hearts and minds of our
nation, and her voice was
regularly heard on radio
broadcasts almost up until the
present day.
For our own
special LLMMG tribute to Vera, we
are pleased to present a rare
recording dating from 1958 –
The Vera Lynn Show
– with the Eric Robinson
Orchestra, together with guests
Bill McGuffie (piano) and vocal
group The Keynotes.
This has been made
available to us by kind courtesy
of The Golden Sounds
Collection and may be
heard below:
June 2020
Obituary :
Jim Palm
It is with regret
that we record the death of
former Robert Farnon Society
member Jim Palm, on April 6th.
Many LLMMG
supporters may remember Jim, who,
back in the 90s, used to attend
our London meetings. For several
years he assisted David Ades with
the editing of Journal Into
Melody, to which he was also a
regular contributor.
He hailed from
Edgware, Middlesex [on the NW
periphery of London] and in
professional life worked for the
BBC in the latter’s
gramophone library.
Upon his
retirement from the Corporation,
he moved to Salisbury, where he
amassed his own sizeable
collection of recorded music,
much of it comprising discs from
the libraries of publishers such
as Chappells and Boosey &
Hawkes.
Jim had an
encyclopaedic knowledge of Light
Music, which was put to good use
in the many articles he wrote for
JIM and also for newspapers and
periodicals in his locality.
Tony Clayden
June 2020
June 2020
Award
Winning singer Robert Habermann
sings daily on Facebook at 6.05pm
To chase the Covid
Virus Blues away Award Winning
singer Robert Habermann is
singing 'live' everyday, one
popular song from The Great
American Songbook on Facebook at
6.05pm. So far he has sung over
100 songs on Facebook since the
start of the lockdown!
Thanks to the
wonderful world of technology,
Robert is accompanied by big
bands / orchestras, using the
original arrangements and also
introduces each song.
Songs include: You Make Me
Feel So Young, That Old
Black Magic, Summer Wind,
I’ll Be Seeing You, Close To
You, I Won’t Dance,
Unforgettable, All Of Me, Magic
Moments as well as current
hits, Skyfall, She Bangs
etc.
Tune into Facebook everyday
at 6.05pm under Robert Habermann, and you will
hear one of your favourite songs
from The Great American Songbook
to take your mind off this
unprecedented time by one of the
country’s most popular
singers
May 2020
"Heather
on the Pampas"
As the Aspidistra
Drawing Room Orchestra's Whit
Monday Concert had to be
cancelled due the COVID-19
problem, they have compensated by
producing a "lockdown"
performance of"Heather
on the Pampas"by Sydney Del
Monte which you can view below.
Also, Adam Bakker,
the organiser of the orchestra,
has sent us a podcast entitled "Beguine
and Bugatti"which you can find
within the Streaming Audio
section of our website here.
May 2020
Johnny
Gregory (1924 – 2020)
It is with regret
that we record the death of the
conductor, composer and arranger
Johnny Gregory, who died at his
home in Gerrards Cross,
Buckinghamshire on April 23rd
2020, about six months short of
his 96th birthday.
During his long
career, he wrote the scores for
fourteen films, (the last in
2000) and TV shows, and was
principal conductor of the BBC
Radio Orchestra between 1973 to
1974.
He made numerous
recordings, both under his own
name and (possibly more famously)
as Chaquito.
Gregory used a
number of other pseudonyms and
his orchestra often appeared
under the name of The
Cascading Strings.
A comprehensive
article about his life and work
is in preparation and will be
published on the LLMMG website in
due course.
We were very sorry
to be unable to present our May
Meeting due to the ongoing
COVID-19 problems. We trust that
you and yours are all well and
are staying safe. It is hoped
that we will be able to go ahead
with our planned October meeting
and will keep you informed as
soon as we have any further
details.
In the meantime,
we have added a new
section to the website
where you can listen to past
programmes of Light Music
courtesy of our member David
Corbett whose 'Light Programme'
is streamed over the web on
Sundays.
This section will
be updated and expanded to
include other presentations over
the coming months, including some
programmes specially created for
London Light Music Online.
31/07/2020
YO-YO MA PLAYS ENNIO MORRICONE
Yo-Yo Ma (cello)
Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra, Ennio
Morricone
26/07/2020
SARAH WILLIS : MOZART Y MAMBO
20/07/2020
PALACE PREMIÈRES
The Countess of Wessex's String
Orchestra
10/07/2020
RESPIGHI : ROMAN TRILOGY
Sinfonia of London- John Wilson
02/07/2020
OSLO PHILHARMONIC + VASILY
PETRENKO
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov
24/06/2020
LISA BATIASHVILI
CITY LIGHTS
16/06/2020
LIKE TO THE LARK
Jennifer Pike : Maria Forsström
The Swedish Chamber Choir / Simon
Phipps
31/05/2020
TIMELESS
The David Snell Trio
The London
Light Music Meetings Group was
formed in 2014 to continue to hold the
meetings which were formerly organised by
the Robert Farnon Society.
Each of these takes the
form of a Sunday afternoon event during
which recorded musical items are
presented and discussed; they are held in
May and October of each year.
The range of music genres
is broadly as before embracing Light
Orchestral, Film, TV and Theatre -
related, Big Band and similar material.
The previous successful
format is retained with a central
feature/guest speaker and includes live
performances from time to time.
We
have now expanded this website to include
news items, details of other musical
events, CD and book reviews, and
obituaries.
We
welcome contributions in respect of any
of the above, also comments and articles.
The Oscar-winning
Italian composer, who wrote over
400 film scores and around 100
concert works, has died in Rome
aged 91.
