| Leigh Haggerwood | |
|---|---|
| Born | England |
| Occupations | Singer, Songwriter, Record Producer, Musician |
| Instruments | Vocals, Keyboards, Piano |
| Associated acts | Scarlet Division, The Florin Street Band |
| Website | www.ukcomposer.com, www.florinstreet.com |
Leigh Haggerwood is a contemporary composer based in London. He specializes in songwriting, keyboards, singing, music production, audio engineering and sound-to-picture scoring. His credits include music for numerous TV shows and commercials which are broadcast around the world.
Along with chef Jamie Oliver, Leigh Haggerwood was a founding member of the band Scarlet Division, who released the single, "Sundial", in October 2000 through Sony Music. Haggerwood also wrote several songs for Jamie Oliver's live shows which included the YouTube hit "Lamb Curry - Give It to Me Hot", "The Kiss of Summer and "Fish Stew". His TV credits include the ITV Text Santa Theme and incidental musical, Oliver's Twist, Trinny and Susannah, Jamie's School Dinners, Petrolheads on BBC Two and TV Land's High School Reunion.
Haggerwood is best known for his Victorian-themed creation The Florin Street Band which he put together to record an original Christmas song he had written called "My Favourite Time of Year". Disappointed by the demise of Christmas song writing in the UK, Leigh set out to create a traditional-sounding song with epic production values and strong melodies. His idea included a music video set in 19th century England with snow-lined streets, lanterns, period costumes and snow-dusted rooftops. UK record companies would not fund such an ambitious idea as they did not consider it financially viable. So Leigh eventually decided to make it happen himself.
He produced the record at Trevor Horn's Sarm Studios and requested the services of 36 musicians including The English Chamber Choir. The majority of Leigh's work is sung and performed by other artists, but Leigh decided to sing "My Favourite Time of Year" himself so that he could maintain the Victorian theme and make sure it would end up as he intended.
The period music video was the biggest challenge of the project, but after a long search, Leigh found talented British director, Nick Bartleet, who shared his vision and helped make it a reality. As the plans progressed, American cinematographer John Perez offered his services as Director of Photography, and the extraordinary video was shot at Blists Hill Victorian Town at Ironbridge in Shropshire. The song and video [1] received an public response through social networking websites with many people describing it as a future classic.
Text Santa is a charity initiative first broadcast on UK television network, ITV, in 2011. The project aims to raise money and awareness for nine charities during the festive season and is heavily promoted by ITV in the form of TV shows, appeals on Heart FM, Capital Radio, and sponsorship by Asda supermarkets and Vodafone. The producers were keen to use "My Favourite Time of Year" as the theme music to the appeal, which Leigh agreed to. With his experience as a media composer, he re-versioned the song and created other original music for the shows. As a gesture of good will, he decided to donate all profits from UK downloads of the song in 2011, to the nine Text Santa charities along with Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust which was the location of his Victorian museum video, and a supporter of The Florin Street Band.