Norman Leyden
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Norman Fowler Leyden (b. October 17, 1917), is an American, conductor, arranger, and clarinetist. He has worked in film and television and is perhaps best known as the conductor of the Oregon Symphony Pops orchestra.
Leyden was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University in 1938, attended Pierre Monteux's Domaine Musicale in Hancock, Maine in 1961, and earned a master's (1965) and doctoral degree (1968) from Columbia University (where he also taught for several years).
He began his professional music career playing bass clarinet for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra while attending Yale. Leyden joined the United States National Guard in 1940 for a planned year of volunteer work, but with World War II he ended up serving in the Army Air Force for five years. While Leyden was serving as a master sergeant in Atlantic City and rehearsing music, Glenn Miller heard Leyden perform. Miller said to him "For a Yale man, you don't play bad tenor".
Miller called on Leyden in September 1943 to conduct the Moss Hart Army Air Force spectacular "Winged Victory". This was a big musical play in Broadway's Shubert Theatre with an all service band. The show started in November 1943. Leyden next requested the opportunity to arrange for Glenn Miller, and was accepted and served as one of three arrangers for Glenn Miller's Air Force Band. His first arrangement for the band was "Now I Know". Sometimes, Leyden would write more complexity into the score than was desirable. Miller told him once "Hey Norm, it was a nice try. But remember it ain't what you write, it's what you don't write".
Leyden also arranged for the reorganized Glenn Miller Orchestra of Tex Beneke.
Between 1956-1959, he was musical director for Arthur Godfrey's radio program. He also worked as musical director on The $64,000 Question (including writing the theme music), and as the musical director of The Jackie Gleason Show, originally called You're in the Picture (1961). He also organized the Westchester County Youth Orchestra in White Plains, New York in 1957, (an organization he led until 1968).
As a staff arranger at RCA Victor he composed and arranged music for Disney and other musicals including Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio.
Leyden also conducted and arranged for many well-known artists including Tony Bennett, Don Cornell, Johnny Desmond, Gordon MacRae, Mitch Miller, Ezio Pinza, Frank Sinatra, and Sarah Vaughan.
He began his long-standing relationship with the Oregon Symphony in 1970 as associate conductor. This lasted for 29 seasons plus 34 seasons as conductor of the Oregon Symphony Pops. Over one million people attended his Oregon Symphony Pops concerts. In May 2004, he retired and was honored with the lifetime title laureate associate conductor. Leyden also served as the music director of the Seattle Symphony Pops for eighteen seasons, and as conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Prairie Pops for eight seasons.
In August 2000, he led the Air Force Falconaires of the Air Force Band of the Rockies in a PBS television special Glenn Miller's Last Flight.
Leyden has worked with Portland-based band Pink Martini and can be heard performing a clarinet solo on the title track of the band's second album, Hang On Little Tomato.
Leyden's personal music score library, housed in an airy basement studio, includes over 1,200 symphonic arrangements and 300 big band works. Leyden continues to practice the clarinet every day.
[edit] Awards
- Oregon Governor's Arts Award, 1993
[edit] References
- "Air Force Band Brings Back Swing Sound of Glenn Miller", Regulatory Intelligence Data, September 29, 1999
- Baker's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001)
- Glenn Miller at Big Band Library.Com [1]
- Leyden, Norman Fowler. A Study and Analysis of the Conducting Patterns of Arturo Toscanini as Demonstrated in Kinescope Films. Columbia University dissertation, 1968.
- Salzman, Eric "Music: Six Conductors", New York Times, August 22, 1961, page 21.
- Stabler, David "Farewell to that Pops Magic" The Oregonian, December 14, 2003, page F1.
