September 2025
Happy
Birthday!
Pete
Murray OBE
100th Birthday on Friday 19th
September
Pete Murray OBE,
British radio and television
presenter and actor. He is known
for his career with the BBC,
including stints on the Light
Programme, Radio 1, Radio 2 and
Radio 4. In the 1950s, Murray
became one of Britain's first pop
music television presenters,
hosting the rock and roll
programme Six-Five Special (1957–1958)
and appearing as a regular
panellist on Juke Box Jury (1959–1967).
He was a recurring presence in
the BBC's coverage of the
Eurovision Song Contest. Pete
retired in 2002 before he
returned to broadcasting for a
Boom Radio special on Boxing Day
2021, over 70 years after his
career began. He returned to the
station on Boxing Day 2022 where
he presented a two-hour show
alongside his friend David
Hamilton.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Murray_(DJ)
Johnny
Mathis
90th Birthday on Tuesday 30th
September
Johnny Mathis,
American singer, started his
69-year career with singles of
standard music. He is one of the
best-selling recording artists of
the 20th century and became
highly popular as an album
artist, with several of his
albums achieving gold or platinum
status and 73 making the
Billboard charts.
Mathis has received the Grammy
Lifetime Achievement Award and
has been inducted into the Grammy
Hall of Fame for three
recordings. Although frequently
described as a romantic singer,
his discography includes
traditional pop, Latin American,
soul, rhythm and blues, show
tunes, Tin Pan Alley, soft rock,
blues, country music, and even a
few disco songs for his album
Mathis Magic in 1979. Mathis has
also recorded seven albums of
Christmas music. In a 1968
interview, he cited Lena Horne,
Nat King Cole, and Bing Crosby
among his musical influences.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mathis
September 2025
RICHARD
RODGERS
BBC RADIO
3, 4pm MONDAY 15th SEPTEMBER
AND THE REST OF THE WEEK.
Episodes will also
be available on BBC iPlayer
here:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002j7g9
September 2025
For information
about past and upcoming episodes
of Friday Night is
Music Night on BBC
Radio 3 you can follow this link:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001xmxc/episodes/player
It shows previous
episodes which are still
available for replay via BBC
Sounds (for up to 30 days after
broadcast).
Coming up
soon:-
BBC Radio 3 at 7.30pm
Friday
19th September 2025
Puttin' on the Ritz
Live from the Lighthouse
in Poole. Michael England
conducts the BBC Concert
Orchestra and soloists in classic
American showtunes from the likes
of Gershwin, Porter and Rodgers.
Friday
26th September 2025
Bridgerton and Beyond
Karen Ni Bhroin conducts
the BBC Concert Orchestra in
music from TV period dramas,
including Bridgerton, Downton
Abbey, Pride and Prejudice,
Sanditon and others.
Friday 3rd
October 2025
Celebrating John Rutter and Bob
Chilcott
The BBC Symphony Chorus
joins the BBC Concert Orchestra
and conductor Neil Ferris at
Saffron Hall in a celebration of
music by two of the great choral
composers of our time.
August 2025
Dancing in
Vienna
SOMMCD 0708
Release Date: 15th
August 2025
SOMM Recordings
celebrates the wealth of popular
concert music produced in Vienna
in the 19th and early 20th
centuries with a release called Dancing
in Vienna, an exhilarating
collection of waltzes to set your
feet tapping. The Philharmonic
Concert Orchestra is led by the
versatile Scottish conductor,
Iain Sutherland, whose previous,
wide-ranging collaborations with
SOMM have received enthusiastic
critical response: "strong
and trenchant, often
exhilarating, never
sentimental," Gramophone;
"getting pretty much
everything right, every nuance
and subtle rhythm," Amazon
USA.
More information: somm-recordings.com/recording/dancing-in-vienna/
July 2025
CLEO
LAINE, jazz singer
1927-2025
It is with sadness
that we report the passing of
Dame Cleo Laine, on July 24th
2025, at the age of 97.
We will publish a
full obituary in due course.
July 2025
Iris
Williams
1946-2025
An obituary by
Anthony Wills can be found here.
July 2025
Lalo
Schifrin
(22nd June
1932 – 26th June 2025 –
Aged 93)
An obituary by
Tony Clayden can be found here.
May 2025
Sophisticated
Harmony
The
lives and music of six great
British arrangers
Oliver Lomax
Foreword by Dick Walter
Arrangers were
once the backbone of the music
business. They were the ones
behind the scenes – the
archetypal backroom boys –
who spent hours in solitude,
often working to crushing
deadlines, scribbling notes onto
score paper which would
subsequently be heard in myriad
contexts: behind a singer or
vocal group; or as an
accompaniment to comedians,
variety acts, all types of pop
group, contestants on gameshows
… You name it, and the
arrangers had to be able to score
it, in any style and for any
instrumental combination –
for TV, radio, documentaries,
films, theatre, records –
and it always had to be good and
delivered on time. In other
words, they had to be completely
flexible and utterly
professional.
"Arrangers
are the people who can transform
a single, frequently
uninteresting line of music into
a glorious, unforgettable, and
transformative aural
experience," explains the
arranger Dick Walter in the
Foreword to Sophisticated
Harmony, a new book in which
Oliver Lomax pays tribute to the
arrangers’ art, focusing on
six British arrangers who worked
on London's thriving music scene
of the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and
'80s. "They provide all the
accompanying material: the rich
string chords, the punchy brass
figures, the swirling saxophones,
the intricate woodwind figures,
the interesting contrapuntal
lines – and they often
change the rudimentary chords
initially provided into whatever
suitable harmonic material the
job calls for."
Each arranger
featured here had his own niche.
Ronnie Hazlehurst became
synonymous with television
through his role as the
BBC’s Music Advisor to the
Light Entertainment Group. So too
did Anthony Isaac, though his
specialist area was drama. Trevor
Bastow and Steve Gray both built
up large catalogues of library
compositions, while Gray's skill
as a big band writer enabled him
to pursue a separate career in
Europe. After working in the
American television industry,
Dick Doerschuk came to London
where he spent two decades
arranging for TV and radio. And
major artists on both sides of
the Atlantic benefitted from
Peter Knight's brilliant
orchestrations, among them the
Carpenters, Barbra Streisand, and
Harry Secombe. Drawing on
interviews with their closest
family, friends, and colleagues,
Oliver Lomax builds up a picture
of not only the arrangers
themselves, but also the
circumstances that shaped their
musical development.
Moreover, there is
insight into the rigours of
writing music for television
– especially the BBC's
prodigious light entertainment
output – as well as radio,
documentaries, and recorded music
libraries, including interviews
with session players,
technicians, and producers who
were involved in these areas.
This, then, is a
vivid account of a fascinating
era of music-making, given from
the arrangers' perspective –
the people who were at the heart
of the music business and the
wider entertainment industry.
Full information
on the Dutton Vocalion website
May 2025
Ronald
Corp OBE
1951-2025
It is with great
regret that we record the death
of Ronald Corp, OBE, who passed
away suddenly on May 7th 2025,
aged 74.
LLMMG attendees
will remember that Ronald was our
guest at the meeting in May 2024
and is of particular interest as
the creator of a series of six
Light Music CDs, four of British
and one each of European and
American compositions. These were
on the Hyperion label, and
featured his New London
Orchestra, with which he made
many other recordings. He
specialised in Choral Music and
ran two choirs in London.
A prolific
composer himself, Ronald was
ordained as an Anglican priest in
1999, latterly serving at the
Church of St Alban the Martyr In
Holborn.
An obituary for
Ronald Corp can be found in our Obituaries Section.
Tony Clayden
May 2025
May 2025
New CD
from Gavin Sutherland
The new album by
GAVIN SUTHERLAND conducting THE
FAST TUNES ORCHESTRA and ROYAL
BALLET SINFONIA.
Newly recorded at Abbey Road
Studios
available from
Ebay on CD or Double LP
52 tracks (see
Ebay item descriptions for full
details)
March 2025
Legends of
Light Music
All of the
articles in the above category,
which appeared on the RFS website
over the years, have now been
reproduced and posted in the 'Articles' section of the LLMMG
website for easy reference.
March 2025
RFS
Website
Due to
insurmountable technical
problems, Geoff Leonard, who has
run the website of the former
Robert Farnon Society for the
last ten years, has been obliged
to permanently shut the site
down.
I am pleased to
inform you that I have been able
to acquire the entire set of data
files, as a result of invaluable
assistance from Jonathan Burns,
and with due thanks to Geoff
Leonard.
These will now be
held as an archive; no further
additions will be possible, but
they will soon be accessible via
the LLMMG website.
Tony Clayden
14/03/2025
March 2025
Robert
Walton
It is with great
sadness that I have just learned
of the death – in Ireland
– of Robert Walton, which
occurred about six months ago.
Robert had been a
stalwart member of the former
Robert Farnon Society for many
years and – after having
retired to the 'Emerald Isle'
– he maintained a steady
stream of contributions to the
RFS website, which were always of
great interest.
An obituary can be
found in the 'Obituaries' section
here.
Tony Clayden
14/03/2025
January 2025
Laurie
Holloway
(1938-2025)
The composer,
pianist and musical director
Laurie Holloway has died at the
age of 86.
An obituary by
Anthony Wills can be found in our
Obituaries section, HERE
January 2025
"The
History of the Northern Dance
Orchestra"
The BBC Northern
Dance Orchestra was a big band
run by the BBC and formed in 1956
as the successor to the BBC's
Northern Variety Orchestra. Known
to listeners as the NDO, it
broadcast on the radio daily,
usually from recordings made at
the Playhouse Theatre in Hulme,
Manchester, and on many trips to
halls throughout the UK.
The NDO project
produced for Serenade Radio
— 3 x one hour programmes on
the NDO and NVO, with
contributions from people who
knew and worked with the bands,
and lots of great music!
Listen
here!
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archived news items
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