Howard Blake is an accomplished pianist and composer who studied at the Royal School of Music in the UK. He composed music for the stage, radio and television, most notably incidental music for several episodes of "The Avengers", before establishing a career in film music. This career includes some stints as orchestrator for other composers such as Henry Mancini and a long CV of scores in his own name. His film music constitutes a large part of his overall output, though Blake has not neglected concert pieces having composed concertos for Clarinet, Piano and Violin as well as an oratorio called "Benedictus". His name came to prominence in the public eye when he composed the music for a production based on the book "The Snowman". This was soon turned into an animated film and "The Snowman" is now regularly broadcast on television at Christmas time. The familiar theme tune "Walking in the Air" was a big hit for the singer Aled Jones, at that time a boy soprano. The team behind this first animation went on to create others in the same style including "Grandpa" and "The Bear". Howard Blake even makes a cameo appearance in "The Bear" as the pianist at the window, while writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs appears as the smiling face in the moon.
For a number of years, Howard Blake played an active role in the Performing Rights Society, and in 1994 he received an OBE for his services to music. Howard Blake has also written pieces for a variety of instruments and combinations. Among several for solo piano is his "Lifecycle" which, like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and similar works by other composers, is a set of 24 pieces in all the keys including the "Walking Song" in A. "The Snowman" is now regularly performed as a stage event during the Christmas Season, for example at London's Sadler's Wells Theatre during Christmas 2006. See below for links to "The Snowman" and other Sheet Music by Blake.
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Although the US ".com" site doesn't seem to have it, you can find the soundtrack to "The Snowman" on Amazon's ".co.uk" site at The Snowman. The soundtrack starts with the narrated version of the story which makes a great bedtime story for children leading up to Christmas, and is reminiscent of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" story. In addition the CD also has the soundtrack on its own without the narration, and this is great fun music for children of all ages. The Piano Score version of the full film is quite tricky to play, but there are simpler versions of the main theme alone or a suite from the film. The theme song is available in a piano plus vocal arrangement (with guitar chords) from MusicRoom, and if you visit di-arezzo.com and perform a search for "Snowman" or "Howard Blake" you will find a wealth of school arrangments for many instruments.
Blake's "Lifecycle" for piano is available from this link at MusicRoom and this link at MusicRoom lists many other pieces for various instruments. The Howard Blake official website is at www.howardblake.com.
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