Biography
Born on 2 December 1924 in London, England, Cyril Ornadel trained in piano, double bass and composition at the Royal College of Music while building a career as composer, arranger and conductor for stage and screen. He spent a period with ENSA, then joined popular singer Dorothy Carless on a tour of Europe. He subsequently formed his own all-female band at Murray’s Club in London and worked as pianist for concert parties. After supplying musical and vocal arrangements for the Players’ Theatre, he was named musical director of the touring revue Hello Beautiful, an engagement that secured his first London post conducting a pantomime at the People’s Palace on Mile End Road. In 1950 he became the West End’s youngest pit conductor by taking the baton for the revue Take It From Us at the Adelphi Theatre. For the rest of the decade he conducted London productions of several hit American musicals, among them Kiss Me, Kate, Call Me Madam, Paint Your Wagon, Wish You Were Here, Pal Joey, Wonderful Town, Kismet, Plain And Fancy and My Fair Lady. He also joined David Croft to write scores for regional stagings of Star Maker and The Pied Piper, as well as the 1956 London Palladium pantomime The Wonderful Lamp, with additional material by Phil Park. Throughout much of the 1950s he served as resident musical director of the popular television series Sunday Night At The London Palladium. In 1960 he shared Ivor Novello Awards with lyricist Norman Newell for the ballad ‘Portrait Of My Love’, which became Matt Monro’s first UK chart entry. Further Ivor Novello Awards followed in 1963 for ‘If I Ruled The World’, with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, taken from his score for the hit musical Pickwick starring Harry Secombe, and for the scores of two productions voted Best British Musicals, Treasure Island in 1973 and Great Expectations in 1975, both written with Hal Shaper. Following initial British and Canadian performances, Ornadel and Shaper revised the Great Expectations score for new productions at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1989 and in Sydney in 1991. His other stage musicals include Ann Veronica, written with Croft in 1969, Once More, Darling, written with Newell in 1978, Winnie in 1988 with additional songs by Arnold Sundgaard, Cyrano: The Musical, again with Shaper, and The Last Flower On Earth, written with Kelvin Reynolds in 1991. He has conducted, composed and orchestrated for numerous radio, film and television projects, among them Some May Live, Subterfuge, The Waitors, I Can’t, I Can’t, Wedding Night, Man Of Violence, Europa Express, Cool It Carol, Die Screaming Marianne, Yesterday, The Flesh And The Blood Show, the series The Strauss Family and Edward VII, Christina and the 1974 remake of Brief Encounter. His albums, particularly those on which his Starlight Symphony Orchestra saluted major popular composers, enjoyed strong sales, especially in America. He also created a series of children’s records for EMI, acted as musical supervisor for the Living Bible recordings featuring Sir Laurence Olivier and formed the Stereoaction Orchestra for RCA Records. A genial and widely respected figure, Cyril Ornadel lived and worked in Israel during the early 1990s. His extensive discography includes Musical World Of Lerner And Loewe, Opening Night-Broadway Overtures, Bewitched, Camelot, Carnival, Dearly Beloved, Enchanted Evening, Gone With The Wind, Musical World Of Jerome Kern, Musical World Of Cole Porter, Musical World Of Rodgers And Hammerstein, So Nice To Come Home To and The Music Man.
Albums
