| Richard Harvey | |
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Richard Harvey attends the premiere of King Naresuan. |
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| Background information | |
| Born | 25 September 1953 London, England |
| Occupations | Multi-instrumentalist and composer |
| Instruments | Various |
| Years active | 1970s–present |
| Associated acts | Gryphon |
Richard Harvey (born 25 September 1953) is a BAFTA Award–winning British musician and composer. He is best known for his film and television soundtracks. He is also known for his Guitar concerto "Concerto Antico", which was composed for the guitarist John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra.
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Born in London, Harvey soon became involved in music, learning the recorder when he was four years old, switching first to percussion and later playing clarinet in the British Youth Symphony Orchestra.[1] By the time he graduated from London's Royal College of Music in 1972, he was accomplished in the recorder flute, krumhorn, and other mediaeval and Renaissance-era instruments, as well as the mandolin and various keyboards. He could have joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra, but instead chose to work with Musica Reservata, an early music ensemble. He subsequently met another RCM graduate, Brian Gulland, and went on to form the progressive rock and folk band Gryphon. During that period, he also worked with other folk rock musicians such as Richard and Linda Thompson and Ashley Hutchings. When Gryphon wound down in the late 1970s, he became a session musician, playing on Kate Bush's Lionheart, Gerry Rafferty's Night Owl, Sweet's Level Headed and Gordon Giltrap's Fear of the Dark and The Peacock Party, among others. He also had a brief spell in New Wave outfit The Banned.
After working with film composer Maurice Jarre in the mid 1970s he became involved in composing for film and television. His first work was to provide music for the television series Tales of the Unexpected in 1979. In the subsequent 31 years he has supplied scores to over 80 television and film projects.
Notable works include 1979's Martian Chronicles ending titles, 1984's wistful Shroud for a Nightingale theme for the PD James detective series, 1985's Defence of the Realm, Alan Bleasdale's G.B.H in 1991 which he co-wrote with Elvis Costello (and which won them, jointly, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award) and most recently in 2006 Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code and Gabriel Range's Death of a President.
In addition he has been a musician on such films as The Lion King, Enemy of the State and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Compositions from Harvey's "Nifty Digits" release (KPM Library #1251) are featured in a famous Sesame Street segment filmed at a crayon factory.
Harvey is also a prolific composer of production music.
In 1984, he was a conductor on one of the series of Classic rock albums by the London Symphony Orchestra. He has frequently toured and recorded with his old friend John Williams, on projects including the 2002 album Magic Box. He also played on the 2004 album The Opera Band by pop/classical crossover act Amici Forever, which reached #74 on the Billboard Top 200 albums and #2 on the Billboard Top Classical crossover chart. He worked again with his BAFTA-winning colleague Elvis Costello on his 2006 album My Flame Burns Blue. A skilled multi-instrumentalist, he has a collection of over 700 different instruments from around the world.[2]
Since 2005, "John Williams & Richard Harvey's World Tour" has popped up in many different countries, from Japan and China to Ireland and Luxembourg, with the duo playing a mixture of world music and classical spanning five continents and five centuries and featuring Chinese, African and European instruments. There are several UK concerts scheduled for May 2011.
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