Peter Knight (composer)

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Peter Knight (b 23rd June, 1917 - 30th July 1985) was an English arranger and composer.

Peter Knight was born in Exmouth, England. He worked with ITV light entertainment stars from "Spot The Tune" (1956) to the comedy series "Home to Roost" (1985). He also worked on feature films from "Curse of the Crimson Altar" (1968, Boris Karloff) to "Hambone and Hille" (1984, Lilian Gish). In between, the highlights of his career were perhaps

Conductor and orchestrator for the film "Ghost Story" (1981)
Orchestrator of the music for the film "The Dark Crystal" (1982)
Orchestra director for many episodes of "The Morecambe and Wise show" (1969 - 77)
Conductor for [[The Last Goon Show of All] 1972

During the early years, he had his own orchestra "The Peter Knight Orchestra". Following his death, Yorkshire television launched the annual Peter Knight award to honour excellence in musical arranging.

His involvement with pop music was varied. Peter Knight became famous for his rich lush orchestration, best illustrated by the slightly "spaced-out" sections of The Moody Blues "Days of Future Passed". Richard Carpenter invited him to fly over to Los Angeles in 1977 in order to generate a similar sound for The Carpenters "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" (1977). There is some kind of private joke here, since the album credits him with conducting the humourously-named "Overbudget Philharmonic". He gave a similar treatment to The Carpenters version of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina". Less famous are his arrangements of the music for the printed scores for the King's Singers. He also arranged several works intended for amateur choirs. He spotted that his sound might have a resonance with a hippy audience, and recorded a single "Within You, Without You", the George Harrison song from "Sgt Pepper", released under the name "Peter Knight and His Orchestra". This was part of a project to release the entire album in an orchestral version. It was released in 1967 on the Mercury label. His son, also called Peter Knight, co-produced the original cast recording of "Hair" (1968).