Barry Gray
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- For the American talk radio host, see Barry Gray (radio).
Barry Gray (July 18, 1908 in Lancashire, England - April 26, 1984 in Guernsey, Channel Islands) was a British musician and composer who is best known for his work for Gerry Anderson. His birth name was Jack Eckles.
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[edit] Life
He was born into a musical family and was greatly encouraged to pursue a musical career from a very early age. Starting at the age of five - with piano lessons - he studied diligently and became a student at the Manchester Royal College of Music[1] and at Blackburn Cathedral. He studied composition under the Hungarian teacher, Matyas Sieber.
Gray's first professional job was in London for B.Feldman & Co., where he gained valuable experience in scoring for theatre and variety orchestras. From there, he joined Radio Normandy as a composer-arranger. After serving six years with the RAF during World War II[1] he returned to the music industry to work with such worthies as Vera Lynn and Hoagy Carmichael.
In the 1956 he joined Gerry Anderson's AP Films, where he first scored the puppet show, The Adventures of Twizzle. This was followed by Torchy The Battery Boy and then the famed Four Feather Falls, a puppet Western based on a concept suggested by Gray.
Gray's association with Gerry Anderson lasted well in to the 1970s. Perhaps most famous for his score to Thunderbirds and its theme "March of the Thunderbirds", Gray composed the themes to the other Supermarionation shows such as Stingray, Fireball XL5, Joe 90, and Captain Scarlet. Additionally, Gray is also known as the composer for the Anderson live-action shows, such as UFO and Space: 1999, as well as the Thunderbirds films and the live action Doppelgänger of 1969. Gray's professional association with Anderson ended following the first season of Space: 1999 when Anderson decided to replace Gray's original theme with one by another composer.
In addition to composing and conducting orchestral scores, he also became interested in the Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument that had been developed by Frenchman Maurice Martenot, and used it to produce unconventional musical sounds as well as electronic sound effects in several of his scores. His expertise and recognition in the field led to his providing electronic music and sound effects for such films as Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks Invasion of Earth, and uncredited work on Fahrenheit 451.[1][2]
The Gerry Anderson Appreciation Society, Fanderson, has recently gained access to all of Gray's original studio tapes and is undertaking a major reissue project, compiling the themes and incidental music from Gray's various Anderson projects on a series of remastered CDs.
[edit] Discography
- Space Age Nursery Rhymes (Comical updates of nursery rhymes, some sung by Gray)
- No Strings Attached (A release of all the commercial recordings of theme music, not originals)
- Thunderbirds Are Go! (film soundtrack with pieces from the TV series; not the original film recording)
- Thunderbird 6 (film soundtrack; very rare)
- Thunderbirds (TV soundtrack, released posthumously)
- Captain Scarlet (TV soundtrack, released posthumously)
- Space: 1999 (TV soundtrack, released posthumously)
- Joe 90 (TV soundtrack, released posthumously)
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Eder, Bruce. Barry Gray - Filmography - Movies - New York Times. New York Times/All Movie Guide. Retrieved on 2006-08-28.
- ^ Barry Gray at the Internet Movie Database
