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For many
years Gordon Langford has been recognised as a fine pianist.
People who take the trouble to check composers’ names
will also recognise him for his brass band music. Light music
admirers first came across the March from his ‘Colour
Suite’ as long ago as 1970 when it was recorded by Sir
Vivian Dunn and the Light Music Society Orchestra. Collectors
of production music know him from titles such as ‘Royal
Daffodil’ and ‘Hebridean Hoedown’.
But
his pre-eminence also as an arranger and orchestrator of other
people's music has tended to obscure the fact that Gordon
Langford is an important composer in his own right. Although
nearly all his music for bands - military (concert) and brass
- is commercially recorded, very little of his original music
for orchestra has found its way into the record shops.
Born
in Edgware, North London in 1930, Langford soon showed an
interest in performing and writing music and had piano lessons
from the age of five. When he was aged nine, one of his compositions
received a public performance, and two years later he was
the concert soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto in A major,
KV 488. He went on to win a Middlesex Scholarship to the Royal
Academy of Music, and included the trombone in his musical
studies. During his army service he was a member of the Royal
Artillery Band, making his first BBC broadcast as solo pianist
with the Band in 1951.
For
several years he worked as pianist with seaside orchestras,
at ballet schools and in restaurants, as trombonist with a
touring opera company, vibraphone player with a jazz group,
and as a ship's musician. During the 1960s he was increasingly
featured as pianist, arranger and composer on BBC programmes
such as Music in the Air, Melody around the World, Ronnie
Barker's Lines from My Grandfather's Forehead, Hubert
Gregg's Thanks for the Memory, Friday Night Is Music
Night, The Radio Orchestra Show and At the Piano,
also making appearances at the Light Music Festivals in
the Royal Festival Hall.
He
has written many arrangements for The King's Singers and numerous
original works for brass band (including London Miniatures
for the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble), for various chamber
ensembles, and for orchestra, the BBC commissioning him to
write a Grand Fantasia on La Boheme for the
centenary of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts at the Royal
Albert Hall in 1994. He won an Ivor Novello Award for the
March from his Colour Suite in 1971, has twice won
the European Broadcasting Union's competition for new music
for brass, and in 1994 was awarded the Gold Badge of Merit
by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors
He
has worked as an orchestrator for several musical shows in
London's West End and for films such as Raiders of the
Lost Ark, Superman II, First Great Train Robbery, Clash of
the Titans and Return to Oz. His arrangements for
brass and military bands are widely recorded, as are many
of his orchestral arrangements, notably with Vernon and Maryetta
Midgley, Evelyn Glennie and Michala Petri. He has featured
on record as pianist with Marilyn Hill Smith and the late
Max Jaffa.
Gordon
Langford now lives in East Devon, spending most of his time
composing, whilst still making the occasional recording, concert
or broadcast.
David
Ades (2003)
The above
biography is based on the booklet notes for the Chandos CD
"Gordon Langford’s Orchestral Classics" (CHAN
10115). This features the BBC Concert Orchestra Conducted
by Rumon Gamba playing:
Fanfare
and Ceremonial Prelude, Concertino for Trumpet and orchestra,
Four Movements for String Orchestra, A Song for All Seasons,
First Suite of Dances, Greenways, Spirit of London, The Hippodrome
Waltz, Pastorale & March from Colour Suite.
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