31 Facts About Kenneth Alwyn

Kenneth Alwyn Wetherell was a British conductor, composer, and writer.

Kenneth Alwyn was known for his long association with BBC Radio 2's orchestral live music programme Friday Night is Music Night, appearing for thirty years as a conductor and presenter, and for his contribution to British musical theatre as a prolific musical director in the 1950s and 1960s.

Kenneth Alwyn was a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and married the actress Mary Law in 1960.

Kenneth Alwyn was the Sub-Professor of Organ and opera coach and founded the RAM Madrigal Choir.

Kenneth Alwyn did not use his surname during his career, and was instead credited as Kenneth Alwyn; this originated during his time at RAM, when he credited himself as such due to a rule which banned current students from performing professionally.

In 1952 Kenneth Alwyn joined the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet as a conductor.

Kenneth Alwyn served as musical director of the Western Theatre Ballet from 1967 to 1969.

Kenneth Alwyn toured extensively in Europe, North America, South Africa and the Far East.

Kenneth Alwyn worked with all of the BBC's orchestras, serving as Associate conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra and, from 1969, as Principal conductor of the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra.

Kenneth Alwyn presented the BBC TV series The Orchestra, conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Kenneth Alwyn presented a BBC Omnibus documentary on the music of Tchaikovsky, directed by Sir John Drummond.

Kenneth Alwyn conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra for a series of performances with Moore at the piano.

Music from Moore's 1992 tour with Kenneth Alwyn featured in a BBC Radio 2 programme celebrating 60 years of the BBC Concert Orchestra, broadcast on 2 March 2012.

The programme notes record that "Kenneth Alwyn's career has encompassed many of the highlights of post-war British musical theatre".

Kenneth Alwyn made original cast recordings of all of the above shows and made studio cast recordings of the following musicals:.

Kenneth Alwyn's orchestral recording career dates back to 1958, when he recorded Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture for Decca Records with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Band of the Grenadier Guards, which has been reviewed and critically acclaimed many times over the years in Gramophone magazine.

Kenneth Alwyn's recording of The Ladykillers: Music from Those Glorious Ealing Films with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia won the 1998 Gramophone Award for Best Film Music Recording, and a selection of Richard Addinsell's film music entitled British Light Music with the BBC Concert Orchestra was chosen as a record of the year by Gramophone magazine.

Kenneth Alwyn composed music and text for the BBC's Battle of Britain tour of North America to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the battle in 1990.

Kenneth Alwyn maintained an interest in flying throughout his life, and was a flight instructor at Brighton City Airport.

Kenneth Alwyn devised and conducted a gala concert in aid of Imperial Cancer Research Fund for the 1993 St George's Day Festival, for which he wrote much of the original music, featuring the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Royal Artillery Band, St George's Singers, St George's Festival Choir and the Wells Cathedral Junior School Choir.

Kenneth Alwyn devised and conducted a BBC concert to commemorate the 50th anniversary of D-Day on 6 June 1994, for which he wrote a musical description of D-Day called Echoes, introduced by Raymond Baxter.

Kenneth Alwyn composed a setting of Queen Elizabeth I's poem Youth and Cupid for a royal gala performance at the Chichester Festival Theatre to commemorate HM The Queen's Silver Jubilee in June 1977.

Kenneth Alwyn wrote the music and lyrics of a number of comic songs for singer Ian Wallace's album Wallace's New Zoo, released in 1965, including The Gorilla, and he has written stories and poems for children.

Kenneth Alwyn composed the song Liverpool for Gerry Marsden, released in 1968.

Kenneth Alwyn composed the theme tune for the LWT series Affairs of the Heart, a set of adaptations of the stories of Henry James, and he was commissioned to write the music for the television adaptation of Sir John Mortimer's play A Choice of Kings, which commemorated the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.

Kenneth Alwyn said that his interest in Coleridge-Taylor's work began when his first dance band, 66 Squadron Air Training Corps, played Demande et Reponse in 1942.

Kenneth Alwyn later discovered that he had been christened at the same church where Coleridge-Taylor had been married and that they had attended the same school and had lived on the same street.

Kenneth Alwyn included Demande et Reponse in the first BBC concert to be broadcast from Fairfield Halls, Croydon, in 1962, and other works by Coleridge-Taylor often featured in his programmes as presenter and conductor of Friday Night Is Music Night.

In 1991, Kenneth Alwyn recorded the entire Song trilogy with Bryn Terfel and the Welsh National Opera.

In recognition of his long-standing work to bring the work of Coleridge-Taylor to greater prominence, Kenneth Alwyn was invited in January 2013 to unveil a blue plaque at the composer's home in Croydon as the culmination of a year of events to commemorate the centenary of Coleridge-Taylor's death.

Kenneth Alwyn died at his home in West Chiltington on 10 December 2020, at the age of 95.