William Blezard was a pianist and composer who was musical director to Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich and Joyce Grenfell.
18 Facts About William Blezard
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William Blezard was the conductor of the Leatherhead Choral Society and the Sutton Symphony Orchestra as well as a teacher at the Guildhall School of Music and the London College of Music and an artist.
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William Blezard had cared for her after she had had a severe stroke in 1994.
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William Blezard never retired and the night before he died he was performing at a charity concert in Barnes.
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William Blezard joined the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of the Second World War and became a Morse code operator in Wick, Scotland.
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William Blezard won the Cobbett Prize for a composition for a Fantasy String Quartet.
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William Blezard then wrote music for Muir Mathieson's documentary films, at Denham Film Studios near the village of Denham, and many others including "The Cardboard Cavalier", 1949, starring Margaret Lockwood and the film version of Noel Coward's play "The Astonished Heart" in 1950 starring Celia Johnson.
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In 1954 William Blezard had arranged a performance for two pianos with Donald Swann and Sydney Carter.
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The piano was so bad that William Blezard asked the management to buy an upright Bechstein at Harrods' sale.
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William Blezard wrote in her first, 1976, autobiography, "In Pleasant Places":.
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Grenfell insisted on William Blezard's getting equal credit, and would complain to the organisers if he was left off a poster or not mentioned in a review.
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William Blezard pushed for higher fees, and persuaded the BBC to increase his fee from 10 to 200 guineas for two Cabaret television shows.
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William Blezard performed the same role for Max Wall 20 years later.
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William Blezard was with Dietrich in Australia in 1975 when she broke her leg on stage in her final performance.
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William Blezard worked with Elisabeth Welch in her one-woman show A Marvellous Party.
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William Blezard was musical director in 1986 for the musical Cafe Puccini by Robin Ray with Nichola McAuliffe at the Wyndham's Theatre, and then played for Honor Blackman in The Life and Times of Yvette Guilbert and Dishonorable Ladies.
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William Blezard wrote numerous piano and chamber music pieces spanning his entire career which are representative of many genres, styles and touches including Sonatinas, Preludes, Scherzi, numerous character pieces and a set of variations written in his later life dedicated to the American pianist Neil Galanter.
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William Blezard was a prolific arranger, who collaborated on several occasions with pop singer-songwriter Louis Philippe towards the end of his life.