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Home , Fame Academy (series 2), Joe Sample, Lesley Garrett, Marguerite Monnot, Michael Ball, Michel Legrand

and Friends – Programme Notes

Lesley Garrett and Friends Queen's Theatre, Barnstaple Thursday 29th June 7.45pm

Lesley Garrett - Music Director Robin Scott - Keyboards Howard McGill - Wind Instruments/Wind Synthesiser and additional Percussion David Goodier - Double Bass - Drums

Programme Legrand/Bergman - Windmills of Your Mind/ Rodrigo - Con Qué La Lavare De Falla - Nana Gershwin - Summertime Gershwin - My Man's Gone Now Instrumental Piece Brel - If You Go Away/Ne Me Quitte Pas Massenet - Adieu Notre Petite Table Louigy/Piaf - Dumont/Vaucaire - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

Interval

Porter - Night & Day Kern - Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine Carmichael - Skylark Sample/Jennings - One Day I'll Fly Away Instrumental Piece Kashif - Ave Maria Lai - Where Do I Begin Hamlisch/Bergman - The Way We Were Horner/Jennings - The Heart Will Go On Baerwald - Come What May

LESLEY GARRETT

Lesley Garrett, CBE, is Britain’s most popular soprano, regularly appearing in both opera and in concert, on television and CD; she has won both critical acclaim and the affection of many fans and music lovers. As a recording artist, she has eleven solo CDs to her credit; Soprano in Red received the Gramophone Award for 'Best-selling Classical Artist of the Year', Diva! A Soprano At The Movies, Prima Donna, Simple Gifts, Soprano in Red, Soprano in Hollywood, and all received silver discs and A Soprano Inspired and Lesley Garrett both achieved gold discs. Lesley’s most recent albums are Travelling Light, The Singer, and So Deep is the Night and she was also a featured artist on the platinum selling Perfect Day single released by the BBC in aid of .

Lesley's major television appearances include 'Lesley Garrett…Tonight’ for the BBC featuring Lesley and guest artists as diverse as Renee Fleming and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Marti Pellow, Michel Legrand and . The series continued as 'The Lesley Garrett Show' featuring programmes from Naples, Seville and New York with guest artists Marcello Alvarez, Ian Bostridge, Alison Moyet, Michael Ball, Maxim Vengerov and Joshua Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes

Bell. Other BBC television appearances have included the documentary ‘Jobs for the Girls’ with Linda Robson and Pauline Quirke, ‘Viva la Diva’ and ‘The Lily Savage Show’. Lesley was also the subject of a South Bank Show on LWT and her music programmes continued on the BBC with 'The Singer', and a specially filmed Christmas concert featuring Lesley and guest artists Jose Cura and Sibonglie Khumalo and ‘Sacred Songs’ featuring sacred music from around the world. Music from the album So Deep is the Night was made into a film titled ‘Lesley Garrett – Desert Dreams’.

Lesley’s operatic career included early engagements at the Wexford Festival, , , and Glyndebourne Festival Opera before joining in 1984. During her time with ENO, Lesley starred in many productions and won critical acclaim for her portrayals of both comic and serious roles. Lesley made her Royal Opera debut in their production of The Merry Widow in 1997. She returned to the Coliseum in the spring of 2001 for a revival of her acclaimed Rosina in Rossini’s ‘Barber of Seville’, having first performed the role there in 1998. She is now a member of the ENO's Board of Directors.

Internationally Lesley has performed throughout Europe, the USA, Australia, Russia, , Japan, , and .

For Millennium Eve, Lesley sang opera and pop classics with , The Eurythmics and in the grounds of the Royal Observatory and in Greenwich to celebrate the arrival of the new century.

In 2000 her autobiography 'Notes from a Small Soprano' was published by Hodder and Stoughton and during that year she appeared at the first-ever ‘Classical Brit Awards’, a gala fundraising concert and musical celebration for Dame Elizabeth Taylor and performed the very last Abide With Me at the 2000 FA Cup Final (prior to the closure of ) in aid of the NSPCC. In 2003, Lesley joined the radio station, Classic FM as a weekly presenter with her own show on Saturday evenings.

In January 2004, Lesley took part in the inauguration ceremony for Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 before travelling to Australia for concerts at the renowned Leeuwin Winery with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and guest artist, Anthony Warlow. The concerts were such a success that she returned to Australia in 2005 for a concert tour with Anthony. Also in 2004 Lesley was invited to be one of the celebrity dancers on the BBC’s hit show ‘’, together with her professional dance partner, , she reached the semi- finals of the competition. In the autumn she sang the role of The Fox in ’s new opera, ‘The Little ’, which was filmed for BBC2, and took part in BBC1’s series ‘Who Do You Think You Are? In February 2005 Lesley was invited to be one of the judges of the BBC’s ‘Comic Relief Does ’ and in May she both sang at and hosted the 2005 ‘Classical Brit Awards’, filmed at the . In the autumn Lesley took the title role in Welsh National Opera’s new production of The Merry Widow which toured the UK. In spring 2006 Lesley joined ITV’s hit show ‘’ as a regular weekly guest.

Lesley was awarded a CBE in the 2002 New Year's Honours List for Services to Music.

THE LESLEY GARRETT FAN CLUB

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The Lesley Garrett Fan Club Po Box 26182 LONDON Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes

SW8 1YQ www.lesleygarrett.co.uk

Tolga Kashif Music Director

London born Tolga Kashif is regarded as one of the most diversely talented musicians of his generation, with success ranging from a critically-acclaimed CD of Richard Strauss tone poems to the musical direction of the BBC Children in Need's Platinum-selling single, 'Perfect Day'.

He studied conducting and composition at the , then later at Bristol University with Derek Bourgeois. His professional début was with the London Philharmonic, after which he has been a frequent guest in this country with the Royal Philharmonic, City of London Sinfonia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Northern Sinfonia. In 1992 was appointed Associate Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra.

Overseas engagements have included conducting the Polish National Symphony and the St Petersburg Philharmonic and he undertook a successful series of concerts at the 1989 Istanbul International Festival with the RLPO. He gave several concerts with the Presidential Orchestra of Turkey and returned to Turkey at the end of 2003 to conduct in Bursa.

Since 1989 Tolga Kashif has been an established composer and a creative partner in The Music Sculptors, one of the principal music companies specialising in sound-to-picture, with numerous commissions from the BBC and all of the major broadcasters. Combining the roles of Composer, Conductor and Producer, he has worked with the BBC Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, English Chamber and National Symphony. Among notable successes are the soundtrack for the award-winning animation 'First Snow of Winter', 'Where the Heart Is' for ITV and documentaries such as 'QED' and the BBC's 'Gulf War'. He has also written and performed many prominent advertising campaigns. 1997's 'Perfect Day' single featured artists such as , David Bowie, , Lesley Garrett, Sir Andrew Davis, the Brodsky Quartet and Courtney Pine and led to the receipt of many accolades and media awards.

Media work includes the score of a feature film, 'The Criminal', released in Spring 2001 and available on DVD, and he also conducted the English Chamber Orchestra on a CD of guitar works. He conducted the world premiere of his composition 'The Garden of the Prophet' with the ECO at the Barbican. In 2001 he composed two songs and arranged a third for Lesley Garrett's CD ‘Travelling Light’ on EMI. The animation '2nd Star to the Left', featuring the voices of Hugh Laurie and Barbara Windsor was broadcast on BBC TV on Christmas Day 2001, featuring another successful score.

March 2002 saw the world premiere of a new song written by him commissioned by the National Foundation for Youth Music. "Drop in the Ocean" was performed at the and received a further performance at the Commonwealth Day Observance at in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Further performances number over 500, with the total number of performers in the ‘000s.

In 2001 Tolga Kashif was commissioned by EMI Classics to compose a symphony piece based on the music of legendary group, Queen. The Queen Symphony was released on EMI Classics in 2002, and received its world premiere at the Royal Festival Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer. Queen members and Roger Taylor attended the performance, as did ’s mother Jer Bulsara and the CD has been a great success, featuring regularly in international Classical Top 10’s. Tolga was also Arranger and Producer for Lesley Garrett's last two CDs, both released on EMI Classics.

Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes

In 2003 he directed the Northern Sinfonia in a successful UK tour with Lesley Garrett and in June gave the Turkish premiere of The Queen Symphony as the opening concert of the International Izmir Festival with the Royal Philharmonic before an audience of 4,500. Later that year he conducted the piece in Australia in two sold-out performances at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The performances were broadcast on ABC Classic FM Radio in Australia and ABC TV also showed the world premiere concert, which has further been shown throughout Europe. The piece has now received performances in the US, and the Netherlands as well as a second Royal Festival Hall performance. This year it will be heard in the UK, Netherlands and Portugal. Tolga Kashif also worked with Vanessa Mae on her last CD for Sony Classical, and Maksim for his last EMI Classics CD.

He returned to direct the Northern Sinfonia on another UK tour with Lesley Garrett in 2004 and appeared with them at the Sage in Gateshead in 2005. Last year he also accompanied treble Harry Sever in his ‘Ave Maria’ at the Royal Albert Hall’s Classic Response concert and his version of ‘Jerusalem’ opened the Classical Brits, also at the Royal Albert Hall and broadcast on ITV. He also recorded songs of his on a CD with singer for EMI Classics and conducted a CD of film music with the Royal Philharmonic.

Last month he conducted the Orchestra of Opera North in a sold-out performance of The Queen Symphony and he will also conduct the Royal Philharmonic, including at the Royal Albert Hall. A UK tour of The Queen Symphony is now planned for the autumn and spring 2007 and other performances will be in Italy, Portugal and Lithuania. He has also been asked to conduct the piece at this year’s Septembre Musical in Montreux (Freddie Mercury’s home) to commemorate what would have been his 60th birthday.

Robin Scott Keyboards

Robin Scott graduated from Goldsmiths’ College, London, with an Honours Degree in Music in 1991. Since then Robin has worked as a session player and performer for many artists such as , The Saw Doctors and Joe Grusheky both as a vocalist and instrumentalist.

Robin is a composer and song-writer and is currently working on several projects for performance in 2007 including a commission from the Basingstoke Area Youth Orchestra and Choir to be performed at The Anvil in July next year and has an on going working relationship with Basingstoke Male Voice Choir as both Composer and Performer.

Robin recently composed his first Musical, Rentaghost - the Musical written in collaboration with Joe Pasquale. The show is currently enjoying a successful tour of the UK and will be returning to theatres next year. As a performer Robin has headlined several arena and many theatre tours. Over the last ten years he has toured extensively around the world and has had the privilege to share the stage with some of the worlds biggest artists ; , Shania Twain, Green Day, Black Sabbath, The Spice Girls, , Robert Plant, , The Corrs, Alanis Morrissette, amongst many others.

Howard McGill Wind Instruments/Wind Synthesiser and additional Percussion

Howard was awarded a music scholarship to Jesus College Cambridge, and studied at the Guildhall. He joined the BBC Radio Big Band in ’99 and has played with , Ray Charles, Bobby Watson, Bud Shank, , Georgie Fame and Michel Legrand.

He is one of the leading saxophonists in Britain, and combines playing lead alto sax in the BBC Radio Big Band with work as a session player, playing with artists ranging from to Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes

Lionel Ritchie and . He has worked with , , Donna Summer and The Spice Girls.

Howard opened Station House Studios in '98, since when he has combined busy playing and composing schedules. In 2001/2 he wrote the music for 40 episodes of Brum, the live-action children’s TV series. He wrote two songs for the forthcoming album from the series, and composed music for five TV advertising campaigns. In 2002 he composed the original music to the Kidscape national video campaign.

Howard and his partner Sarah Eyden have their own state-of-the-art studio in North London, and are forging impressive credits as writers and producers of their own music. Most recently they have contributed original music to 'Love For Sale', a 10-part documentary series made by Faction Films for BBC TV.

David Goodier Double Bass

A full time musician since 1980, David has appeared with artists such as John Etheridge, Tal Farlow, James Williams, Andy Sheppard, John Parricelli, Gerard Presencer, Mornington Lockett, Pete King, Ed Jones, Damon Brown, Theo Travis, Alan Barnes, John Law, the Four Tops and Roland Rat! Theatre work for Bristol Old Vic includes Stone Free, Marat/Sade, Twelfth Night, A Taste of Honey, Brother Soul Sisters, A Streetcar Named Desire, Up the Feeder, Down the 'Mouth, Salad Days, The Wizard of Oz and several pantomimes. Other productions include Annie, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Oliver!, Little Shop of Horrors…

David played bass for the 2001 UK tour of a soul musical written by Kwame Kwei-Armah, featuring soul diva Ruby Turner. Recent TV includes sessions for Modern Times, Animal People, Score, Belonging and Waking the Dead - all for the BBC. Current regular bands include pianist Jonathan Taylor’s trio, Celtic/jazz influenced Carmina and various groups led by saxophonist (and James Brown MD) Pee Wee Ellis.

Since 2002 he has been touring worldwide with Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull), appearing on his last solo album 'Rupi's Dance' and the live DVD ‘Ian Anderson plays Orchestral Jethro Tull’. He also teaches privately and is visiting bass tutor at Exeter University and Dartington College of Arts.

Paul Smith Drums

Paul hails from Swansea in South and has now been playing drums for over thirty five years. Much of this time he has spent touring the world playing in such places as Australia, Hong Kong, Korea, and Dubai. He has appeared on many television programs working with artists such as Michael Ball, Charlotte Church, Sasha Distelle, Dave Edmunds, Lesley Joseph, Eartha Kitt, Cerys Mathews, Leo Sayer, Larry Adler, Sir Harry Secombe, David Soul, Shakin’ Stephens, Bryn Terfel, , , Toyah Wilcox and even featured in a drum duet with Eric Sykes. Over the years Paul has performed in countless radio shows, recorded extensively, and toured the UK with Freddie Starr, Roger Whittaker, and has been a member of Max Boyce’s band for 20 years. He has also toured with theatre shows including Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Crazy for You, and has enjoyed playing a wide range of genres including jazz, big band, fusion, rock and classical including a live Radio 3 broadcast of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.

Paul Plays Tama drums, Roland electronics and Zildjian cymbals exclusively. Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes

Michel Legrand (b.1932)

Windmills of your mind from The Thomas Crown Affair

I will wait for you from Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

The Summer Knows from Summer of '42

Michel Legrand was born in in February 1932, his father being the conductor (1908-1974) who, as well as composing the music for several films himself, also acted as accompanist for such stars as Maurice Chevalier, Edith Piaf and Fernandel. Michel Legrand began his musical career playing jazz piano and made his first recordings at the age of twenty- three. It soon became obvious, however, that he was destined to be a fine conductor and arranger. From the 1960s he has worked in Hollywood and Britain as well as in his native France and his film scores have included Bonjour tristesse, The Go-Between and A Time for Loving and, in 1968, The Thomas Crown Affair, the theme song of which - Windmills of my mind - won an Academy Award.

In the original version of this film, Thomas Crown was a bank robber played by Steve McQueen but, in the 1999 remake, Pierce Brosnan's Crown was an art thief. Faye Dunnaway played important roles in both films as did Michel Legrand's song.

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) was first released in 1964. It was directed by and starred Catherine Deneuve as Geneviève and Nino Castelnuovo as Guy, the two star-crossed lovers. In the mid-1990s, under the supervision of Demy's widow, Agnes Varda, the film was re-mastered and its colour enhanced.

Legrand's song, The Summer Knows, comes from the 1971 film Summer of '42 which starred Jennifer O'Neill, Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser and Oliver Conant. This film, which tells of the sexual awakening of a group of young people on Long Island, won for Legrand another Academy Award, this time for Best Original Score.

Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999)

Con qué la lavaré? from Cuatro madrigales amatorios

Born on 22 November 1901 in the town of Sagunto, near Valencia, Joaquín Rodrigo became blind at the age of three. Nevertheless he began his musical education as a child and by the time he was twenty-three he had had a piece performed by the Valencia Orchestra. Three years later he became a pupil of Paul Dukas at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, a city to which he was to return later for further studies at the Conservatoire and the Sorbonne. It was while he was in Paris that he was also encouraged in his work by Manuel de Falla. He went back to Spain in 1939 and settled in Madrid. The following year the work by which he is best known, the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra, was given its first performance and he was soon being Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes acclaimed as the leading post Civil War Spanish composer. In 1947, the year after Falla's death, Rodrigo was offered the newly created Manuel de Falla Chair at the University of Madrid and three years later he was elected to that city's San Fernando Fine Arts Academy.

In the summer of 1947 Rodrigo had been suffering from an eye infection and was in great pain. Nevertheless, it was during this period that he completed his Cuatro madrigales amatorios. In fact, these ‘four madrigals of love’ are actually transcriptions and adaptations of songs written in 1551 by the Spanish composer, Juan Vasquez (c1510-c1560).

The first performance of these songs took place at the Círculo Medina in Madrid on 4 February 1948 and they were sung on that occasion by four young pupils of Lola Rodríguez Aragón - María Morales, Celia Langa, Blanca María Seoane and Carmen Pérez Durias - accompanied at by Rodrigo himself. According to the composer's wife, ‘the applause was beyond words, and the four songs had to be repeated’. In the third - Con qué la lavaré? - the singer wonders what to wash her face with. She knows that married women wash theirs in lemon water but all she has is pain and sorrow in which to wash hers.

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)

Nana from Siete canciones populares espanolas

In 1914, not long after a production of La Vida breve at the Opéra Comique in Paris, Manuel de Falla was asked by a member of the cast - a singer from Málaga - to suggest some Spanish songs that she could include in a concert that she was soon to give in the French capital. At about this time Falla was also approached by a Greek singing teacher who needed some help in composing suitable accompaniments for some folk songs from his homeland. Both projects interested the Spanish composer and, having enjoyed the experience of arranging the Greek songs for voice and piano, he set about composing his own Siete canciones populares espanolas for the lady from Málaga. For some of these seven popular Spanish folksongs he used existing folk melodies, sometimes just harmonising them, sometimes adding new ideas of his own, while for others he composed the music himself. They were completed just before the outbreak of the First World War and first performed in the winter of 1914/15.

A Nana is an Andalusian lullaby and was probably the first music that Falla heard sung by his mother. ‘Sleep, little one sleep, sings the mother, ‘sleep my darling, my little morning star’.

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

Summertime & My man's gone from

The first performance of George Gershwin's opera, Porgy and Bess took place at the Colonial Theatre in Boston on 30 September 1935. Ten days later it opened at the the Alvin Theatre in New York for a run of one hundred and twenty-four performances. The response to it was lukewarm and it failed to make a profit but the following year the production went on a three- month tour to various American cities and, although the opera itself still failed to impress, some of its songs were gradually becoming popular in their own right. Success came to Porgy and Bess, however, in January 1942 when a slightly revised version was produced in New York and ran for two hundred and eighty-six highly profitable performances before embarking on another tour.

Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes

The opera is based on a book by DuBose Heywood, which in turn was based on the life of a crippled Negro called Samuel Smalls who lived in Charleston, South Carolina, during the 1920s. The book was published in 1925 and soon afterwards, Heywood and his wife, Dorothy, turned it into a play. The opera is set in Catfish Row, a once-elegant mansion in Charleston, South Carolina, now degenerated into run-down appartments lived in by the local Negro population. At the beginning of the opera, amidst much bustling activity, Clara, the wife of Jake the fisherman is to be heard singing the lullaby, Summertime, as she rocks her baby to sleep. Soon the stevedore, Crown, arrives accompanied by his girl-friend, Bess. Already the worse for drink, he joins in a game of dice and, when he loses, lashes out and kills a man named Robbins. As the whole community mourns, Robbins' wife Serena sings of her tragic loss in My man's gone.

Jacques Brel (1929-1978)

If you go away/Ne me quitte pas

Born in April 1929 in Brussels, was destined, at least in the eyes of his father, to work for the family packaging firm. However, by the age of sixteen he had formed his own theatre group and had started writing plays for it. In 1952 he began to write songs but his family was very much against his taking up a career as a singer and even threatened to cut him off without a penny. Nonetheless, the following year he not only performed at a cabaret in Brussels but also made his first recording. Encouraged by Jacques Canetti, a talent spotter, he moved to Paris and in 1955 recorded his first album of songs. It was not, however, until he had met the pianists François Rauber and Gérard Jouannest that his career began to take off, the former acting as his accompanist in the recording studio, the latter at his live concerts. Having had one of his early songs sung there by Juliette Gréco, Brel eventually took part in a highly successful concert at the Olympia Music Hall in Paris in 1958. He was back in the early 1960s as the top-of-the-bill to great acclaim from audiences and critics alike.

When Brel returned to the Olympia in 1966 it was to say goodbye since he had decided to abandon his singing career in order to work on other things. One of his first new projects was to bring Mitch Leigh's Man of la Mancha to Europe. After opening in Brussels, Brel went on to play the role of Don Quixote in Paris one hundred and fifty times. By the beginning of the 1970s he was concentrating more on the cinema both as an actor and director but he did continue to record his own songs, his last album being recorded in 1977 with his old and trusted colleagues Rauber and Jouannest. This album was greeted with hugh enthusiasm and went on to sell over two million copies.

By then, Brel had gone to live on Hivoa, one of the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific, where he as able to indulge his for flying by ferrying supplies from one island to another. He was also by then quite ill and, in July 1978, he had to be flown back to hospital in Paris where he died on 9 October. His songs, however, live on and many other famous singers have added them to their repertoire. Celine Dion, for example, has recorded Quand on n'a que l', David Bowie, Amsterdam and both Nina Simone and Sting, Ne me quitte pas (If you go away).

Jules Massenet (1842-1912

Adieu, notre petite table from Manon

Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes

In 1884, nine years before Puccini composed his opera Manon Lescaut, Jules Massenet completed an opera on the same subject called, simply, Manon. It was given its first performance at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 19 January 1884 and was first seen in England the following year when it was performed in Liverpool. The story told in the opera is that of a young girl who falls in love on her way to enter a convent and of her subsequent elopement to Paris where she enjoys the high life until condemned to transportation as a prostitute. Act II finds Manon happily at home with her lover, the Chevalier des Grieux. Soon her cousin arrives with a wealthy nobleman and suggests to Manon that she would be better off with riches than love. Thinking that her idyll might soon be over she sings sadly to the table that she sees as a symbol of the domestic bliss she has shared with Des Grieux and bids it farewell - Adieu, notre petite table.

Louiguy (1916-1991)

La Vie en rose

Louis Guiglielmi was born in Barcelona in 1916 but he is best known as Louiguy, one of the several pseudonyms that he used as a songwriter. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire and has his first success with the song Ça sent si bon la France which he wrote in 1941 to words by Jacques Larue. It was Maurice Chevalier who brought this song its popularity when he sang it at the Casino de Paris. In 1946 he composed Sérénade florentine to words by Jacques Plante and in 1950, Cerisiers roses et pommiers blancs (Cherry pink and apple blossom white). He also composed an operetta - La Quincaillière de Chicago (The Ironmonger of Chicago) - in 1958.

The one song, however, with which he is most famously associated is La Vie en rose, although it was not he who initiated it. Towards the end of the Second World War, Edith Piaf announced to her friends that she had a tune running through her head and that she had put some words to it. She wanted two of these friends - Roland Gerbeau and Marianne Michel - to sing it. At that stage, however, she was not thought of as a composer and nor was she a member of S.A.C.E.M., the Society for Authors, Composers and Music Publishers. Without such membership, she was not entitled to be considered the composer of her song so she needed a professional composer to work on it for her and sign it as his or her own. Having approached her long-standing friend and colleague, Monnot (composer of many Piaf songs, notably Milord), who did not find the new song appealing, she eventually went to Louiguy who was happy to knock the song into shape and to put his name to it. Piaf herself, however, did not add the song to her own repertoire until 1946. By the time he died on 4 April 1991, Louiguy had composed music for over one hundred films.

Charles Dumont (b.1929)

Je ne regrette rien

According to Margaret Crosland, her biographer, for Edith Piaf it was always either ‘all or nothing’ and, for many years as far as Charles Dumont was concerned, it was ‘nothing’. Born in southwestern France in 1929, Dumont has studied the trumpet at the Toulouse Conservatoire before moving to Paris where he was to study the piano. Soon he was composing songs but, as this activity did not earn him a living, he had to rely for that on clerical work in a car factory. Eventually he found a publisher who encouraged him to write songs for the likes of Tino Rossi and Sacha Distel and before long he was winning prizes, including, prophetically as it turned out, the Prix Edith Piaf at Deauville.

Edith Piaf herself, however, did not like Dumont - again according to Margaret Crossland, she thought him ‘too fat’ - so she was not keen to perform any of his songs. Dumont was, if nothing else, persistent and eventually (in 1960) he managed to play and sing her the song which, for so Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes many people nowadays is the one most closely associated with Piaf. It was called Non, je ne regrette rien. According to another biographer, Simone Berteaut who claimed to be her step- sister, Piaf, on hearing the song for the first time, asserted that, it was ‘wonderful, unbelievable...just what I feel, just what I think...what I believe’ and that Dumont himself was ‘a wizard’.

Having suddenly gone from ‘nothing’ to ‘all’, Dumont found himself commanded to write song after song for Piaf. Of these, another of the best known is Mon Dieu which, like Non, je ne regrette rien, dates from the early 1960s and has words by Michel Vaucaire.

Cole Porter (1891-1964)

Night and Day from Gay Divorce

Cole Porter was born in Peru, Indianna, in June 1891, the son of a prosperous fruit farmer and grandson of a millionaire. As a child he learnt both the piano and the violin and then went on university - first Yale and then Harvard - where he studied law and music. From an early age he had been writing songs and by 1920 had had some of them performed in various revues. By then he had also spent some three years in the French Foreign Legion and had married a wealthy French socialite. During the 1920s he started to work on complete shows and in 1929 he had two great successes with Wake Up and Dream in London and Fifty Million Frenchmen in New York.

In 1937 he had a severe riding accident which casued him severe pain for many years and eventually resulted in him having to lose a leg. Depression and self-doubt followed and it was not until 1948 that he fully regained his confidence with the musical Kiss me Kate.

Porter's musical comedy Gay Divorce opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York on 29 November 1932 and ran for nearly two hundred and fifty performances. Starring Fred Astaire, Luella Gear, Eric Blore, Clare Luce and Grace Moore, it told of a British novelist and his attempts to woo a woman who was about to be divorced. An American cast, led again by Fred Astaire, later brought the show to Britain where it was seen for the first time at the Palace Theatre on 2 November 1933. The following year it was transformed into a film with a slightly different title - The Gay Divorcée - as a vehicle for Fred Astaire and his new, and most famous, dancing and singing partner, Ginger Rogers. The score of the original musical contained several well-known numbers including Night and Day, After you, who? and I've got you on my mind, but the only one of these to be used in the film version was Night and Day.

Jerome Kern (1885-1945)

Can't help lovin' dat man from Show Boat

Although the name of Oscar Hammerstein II is now almost invariably coupled with that of , this famous partnership did not begin until the early 1940s by which time Hammerstein was nearly fifty years old. The first Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was ! which appeared in 1943. Prior to that Hammerstein had been associated with several successful productions, notably Rose-Marie, The Desert Song and Show Boat. For Show Boat Hammerstein had collaborated with the composer and fellow New Yorker, .

Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes

On the Show Boat known as ‘Cotton Blossom’, Julie La Verne is the leading lady while her husband, Steve Barker, is the leading man. However, all is not in perfect harmony on board the Show Boat. Pete, the engineer, is in love with Julie and has given her a brooch which she has passed on to Queenie, the Black Servant. After a fight in which Steve knocks Pete down, the engineer is sacked by Captain Andy Hawks, the boat's owner. Hawks has a daughter called Magnolia who soon falls in love with Gaylord Ravenal, a riverboat gambler she has seen on the wharf. Although her mother has forbidden her to talk to Julie, Magnolia arranges a secret meeting in the boat's kitchen and tells her friend all about it. Julie points out that love is a funny thing and that even if your man is a bad lot it is often difficult to stop loving him. The song that she sings to explain this -Can't help lovin' dat man - recurs throughout the musical and is later sung by Magnolia herself when she auditions to take over from Julie at the Trocadero Night Club in Chicago.

Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981)

Skylark

Hoagland Howard Carmichael, known to all as Hoagy, was born in Bloomington, Indiana, on 22 November 1899, exactly two years before Joaquín Rodrigo and thus shared with him a birthday on the feast day of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Carmichael's father was an electrician but it was his mother, a pianist at the local cinema, who gave him his first piano lessons. In 1916 he moved with his family to Indianapolis and there studied with a ragtime pianist called Reggie Duval. Back in Bloomington, Carmichael studied for a law degree at Indiana University and it was while there that he met and became friends with the jazz pianist and cornet player, Bix Beiderbecke. Soon Carmichael had composed for his new friend a piece he entitled Free wheeling but which was later to become better known as Riverboat Shuffle.

Gradually his songs started to attract favourable attention and he decided to give up the law and to become a full-time musician. His first great success came with Stardust which, having started out in 1927 as the purely instrumental Barnyard Shuffle, only started to gain popularity when words by Mitchell Parish were added to it. In 1929 he moved to New York and started to record some of his own songs as both singer and pianist. In the mid-1930s he moved to Hollywood and there started to write songs with the likes of and . He also started to appear in films. By the 1940s he was not only working as a singer-songwriter and film actor but also as a broadcaster on the radio and as the author of his own auto-biography.

It was also during that decade - in 1942 - that he created with Mercer his other best-known song, Skylark. It has been pointed out by John Edward Hasse, the curator of American Music at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution, that Carmichael's ‘two greatest songs - Stardust and Skylark - reveal deep jazz influence: eloquent, lyrical striking melodies that seem like Beiderbeckian solos captured for all time’. died just after Christmas 1981 at Palm Springs, California.

Joe Sample (b.1939)

One day I'll fly away

It was at the age of five that Joseph Leslie Sample started to learn to play the piano. Born on 1 February 1939 in , , he found in that city many varied musical traditions from classical through gospel to jazz all of which influenced him in his early years. With a group of schoolfriends he founded the Jazz Crusaders and with them moved to in 1960. Having dropped the word ‘Jazz’ in the early 1970s, the Crusaders continued recording until 1987, acquiring several gold and platinum discs along the way. Joe Sample also made a number of Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes highly succesful solo albums and wrote songs for other artists, notably B.B.King and .

One of Sample's songs to be made popular by Randy Crawford (as well as by the Crusaders) was One day I'll fly away. This song, like from the film Titantic, has words by . Born in 1948 in Texas, Jennings played the guitar in a rock band as a teenager but later taught literature at the University of Wisconsin. In 1971 he moved to Nashville and then, five years later, to Hollywood. He wrote songs with the composer Richard Kerr for Barry Manilow and later with he wrote Tears in Heaven. His association with Joe Sample and the Crusaders also produced Street Life in 1979, another song which Randy Crawford sang to great effect.

One day I'll fly away, with its hint of the Waltz of the Flowers by Tchaikovsky, has more recently found further fame through its inclusion in the film Moulin Rouge. Here it is sung by who was awarded a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Musical Film for her role as Satine.

Tolga Kashif (b.1962)

Ave Maria

According to the Gospel of St Luke, ‘in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that are highly favoured, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women’. Thus it was that Mary learnt that she was to become the mother of a son who was to be called Jesus and who was to ‘reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end’. Mary then went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, soon to become the mother of John the Baptist, who said ‘blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb’.

It is with sections from these verses from the first chapter of Luke's Gospel that the well-known prayer, Ave Maria, begins: ‘Hail Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee: blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb’. (Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.) The remaining words of the prayer were added, by way of a petition, in the fifteenth century: ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen’. (Sancta Maria, mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae, Amen.)

Over the years, many composers have taken these words and set them to music of all kinds; composers such as Palestrina, Victoria, Caccini, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Verdi, Elgar, Holst and Stravinsky. It was in 2001 that Tolga Kashif composed for Lesley Garrett his setting of the Ave Maria using a combination of the original Latin words with an English paraphrase of them.

Francis Lai (b.1932)

Where do I begin? from Love Story

The year 1932 was a good one for film composers as it saw the birth of not only (on 8 February) and Michel Legrand (on 24 February) but also of (on 26 April). Lai was born in Nice and studied the piano as a child and played in the local orchestra. Having Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes discovered jazz along the coast in Marseilles he moved to Paris and settled in the Montmatre district.

In the early 1960s he met Edith Piaf and was soon writing songs for her. His introduction to Piaf had been quite a surreal one. At that time, she was convalescing in a Paris clinic and Lai was summoned to her bedside to play for her on his accordian. The louder she encouraged him to play the more the complaints came from patients and nurses alike and, in the end, she was sent home, recovered or not.

It was in 1966 that Lai had his first great success as a film composer with his score for Un Homme et une femme. Its title song and Today it's you both had words by the film's director, Claude Lelouch, with whom Lai was subsequently to work on several other projects. Over the years, Lai has composed the music for more than one hundred films and six hundred songs but it is for his score for Love Story, which won him an Oscar in 1970, that he is probably best known. This film grew out of the novel by Erich Segal which tells the ultimately tragic love story of a well- educated young girl from a poor background and a rich, sporty lad whose father threatens to disinherit him if the two should marry. They do, indeed, get married but any happiness they could have hoped for is short-lived for she is soon diagnosed with an incurable disease.

The film's main theme, in orchestral versions by both Lai himself and by , did well in the charts as did the vocal arrangement - Where do I begin? with its words by Carl Sigman - as sung by Andy Williams. Others to have performed this song have included Dame Shirley Bassey, Perry Como and Placido Domingo.

Marvin Hamlisch (b.1944)

The way we were

Marvin Hamlisch was born on 2 June 1944 and, at the age of seven, was the youngest ever student at the Juilliard School of Music in his home city of New York. He had his first hit song in 1960 with Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows which was sung to great effect by Jack Jones. Later he wrote songs for Ann-Margaret and Lisa Minelli and acted as pianist for Groucho Marx.

In 1974 he won an Academy Award for the score he had created from the works of Scott Joplin for the film, The Sting, and in that same year won two more Oscars for his association with the film The way we were; for best score and best song. This film, directed by Sydney Pollack, starred (as Kate Morosky) and Robert Redford (as Hubbell Gardiner) and dealt with an on-off love affair which went from university campus, to New York to Hollywood and the McCarthyite Communist witch-hunt of the late 1940s. The words of the award-winning song, The way we were, were written by Alan Bergman.

In 1975 Hamlisch composed the score for A Chorus Line which won a Pullitzer Prize for the play and a Tony Award for the music. This was followed in 1979 by They're playing our song and several more film scores.

James Horner (b.1953)

My heart will go on from Titanic

Born in Los Angeles in August 1953, began learning the piano at the age of five. Having spent some time living in London and studying at the , he Lesley Garrett and Friends – Programme Notes returned to the USA in the early 1970s to study at the University of Southern California. Later in that decade he taught music theory for a while and then, in 1978, he was commissioned by the American Film Institute to compose the music for The Drought. Before long he was being asked to provide scores for science-fiction and horror movies such as Lady in Red, Humanoids from the Deep and Battle beyond the stars. From these critically unacclaimed films he soon moved on to more popular productions such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was, however, with his score for Titanic that James Horner has achieved his greatest success so far, both musically and financially, the CD remaining at the top of the charts for several months.

The song My heart will go on, which permeates the latter part of Horner's score, has words by Will Jennings and was sung for the film by the Canadian singer, Celine Dion. This might never have been, for it seems that, while the film was being made, it had been decided that it was not to have a theme song. Horner, however, arranged secretly with Jennings to write some words that would fit the film's main melody and, only after Celine Dion had recorded the resulting song, did he suggest to James Cameron, the director, that it should be included on the film's sound track.

David Baerwald (b.1960)

Come what may

The 2001 film Moulin Rouge, directed by , is set in the famous Paris nightclub of that name during the year 1899. It stars Nicole Kidman (as Satine), Ewan McGregor (as Christian), Richard Roxburgh (as the Duke of Worcester) and John Leguizamo (as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec). The music for the film comes from many sources and comparatively little of it is original. However, Craig Armstrong was awarded a Golden Globe for that part of the score for which he was responsible. Of the already existing music to find its way into this film's soundtrack there is Nature Boy (as sung by David Bowie), Allen Toussaint's Lady Marmelade, Elton John's Your Song, Marc Bolan's Children of the Revolution, songs from The Sound of Music and by , and, as has already been mentioned, One day I'll fly away by Joe Sample and Will Jennings.

Another song to feature in this film is Come what may by David Francis Baerwald and this too was nominated for a Golden Globe. Baerwald was born in Oxford, Ohio, and, for a time, was one of the two Davids in the rock band known as David & David. He began his solo career in 1990 with Bedtime Stories and this was followed in 1993 with his second album Triage. He has also been the producer for several rock and roll artists such as Sheryl Crow, whom he joined for her debut at the Tuesday Night Music Club, and .