Lindley Evans CMG (18 November 1895 – 2 December 1982) was a South African-born Australian composer, pianist and teacher. He is best known for his collaboration with Frank Hutchens in a famous piano duet which lasted 41 years, and as the ABC's "Mr Melody Man" for 30 years.
Harry Lindley Evans was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1895, to English parents. He had become an organist and chorister before he moved to Sydney when he was 17. He went to the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music to advance his keyboard technique, where he studied with Frank Hutchens. He also taught piano privately. He later studied with Tobias Matthay in London.[1]
He was accompanist to the flautist John Lemmoné, and accompanied Dame Nellie Melba on her tours of England and Australia from 1922 until her death, always playing from memory. From 1920 to 1929 he taught at a private girls' school, later adapting his lectures in music appreciation into scripts for an ABC radio program called "Adventures in Music".
He joined Frank Hutchens in a two-piano partnership, which lasted from 1924 until Hutchens' death in 1965. They performed standard piano duet works as well as some of their own compositions, and both played from memory. He and Hutchens included the young and then unknown Joan Hammond on one of their tours to Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmania, over the ABC's misgivings.[2]
He joined the Conservatorium in 1928 as a teacher, alongside colleagues such as Isador Goodman, who was also from Cape Town and became a firm friend. He remained in this position for 40 years. From 1930 to 1946 he was a visiting teacher at another school.
Evans wrote a small amount of solo piano music. His only substantial piano piece is Rhapsody, the rest being mainly light pieces (Vignette: Fragrance, Lavender Time, Berceuse (For a Sleeping Sand Baby) and competition/examination pieces (Tally-Ho!, Merry Thought). There are also songs and choral works.[3] His song Australia Happy Isle, with words by Jessie Street, won the Victorian sesquicentennial prize in 1934.[4] One of his best known works was Idyll for two pianos and orchestra, which was premiered in the Sydney Town Hall on 4 September 1943 with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Edgar Bainton, along with the premiere of Hutchens' Fantasy Concerto.[5]
He also wrote some film scores, for Charles Chauvel's Uncivilised (1936), Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940) and The Rats of Tobruk (1944), and Ken G. Hall's Tall Timbers (1937).
For thirty years from 1939 Lindley Evans was involved in the ABC Children's Hour and the Argonauts Club, as "Mr Melody Man". This interest in children led to involvement in the National Music Camp Association as piano tutor, administrator, director and councillor. He worked with the Australian Youth Orchestra from 1957. He was also a frequent adjudicator at eisteddfods and an examiner for the Australian Music Examinations Board.
He was a prominent member of the arts-based Sydney Savage Club, including a stint as president.[6]
Lindley Evans was appointed a Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1963.[7]
He died aged 87 on 2 December 1982, the same day as his long-time friend and colleague Isador Goodman. He was survived by his wife Marie; they had no children.
His autobiography Hello, Mr Melody Man: Lindley Evans Remembers, was published in 1983.