Biography

Ernest Tomlinson was a major figure both as composer and conductor in the light music genre, known in the U.S. as easy listening. He also wrote works in larger concert music genres, including symphonic jazz. Tomlinson was born in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, England, on September 19, 1924. His family was musical, and his younger brother, Fred Tomlinson, was heard on the soundtrack of the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus. Ernest's musical career began at age nine when he joined the choir at Manchester Cathedral. At 16, he won a scholarship to Manchester University and the Royal Manchester College of Music. His composition studies were interrupted by a stint in the Royal Air Force, where he saw action in France in 1944 and 1945. Tomlinson returned to school at the war's end and graduated in 1947 with a composition degree, soon finding work as a staff arranger for the publisher Arcadia and Mills in London. For some years, he had a successful career working on scores for radio and later television, plays, and studio recording sessions. He also continued to write music of his own, and his orchestral suite English Folk-Dances (1949) became popular. From 1951 to 1953, he served as conductor of the Chingford Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society. When he formed his Tomlinson Light Orchestra in 1955, he had more of a chance to program his works. At first, Tomlinson worked mostly in the genre known as light music in Britain and easy listening in the U.S., writing short orchestral pieces in semi-popular styles. The Little Serenade, composed in 1955, became a light music standard. Even Tomlinson's short works were quite varied, sometimes incorporating the brass band music he heard growing up in northern England. He later composed longer pieces for full orchestra. He was one of the earlier British composers to write symphonic jazz, and when his jazz-influenced Symphony '65 was performed in Moscow in 1966, it was the first such work heard in the Soviet Union. Tomlinson's Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne of 1976 contains what has variously been reported as 129 and 152 quotations from other pieces of music. That year, he became director of the Rossendale Male Voice Choir, and he also founded the Northern Light Orchestra. In 1984, hearing that the BBC was divesting itself of its collection of light music, Tomlinson acquired it and installed it in a barn at his Lancashire farm home. He lived long enough to see the beginnings of a revival of interest in light music, and his expertise in the field was valued. He served as a consultant to the Marco Polo label, which issued a number of light music recordings, and he conducted the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and the Slovak Radio Symphony in several recordings for the label. Tomlinson remained active as a choral conductor into old age, and he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2012. He died in Longridge, England, on June 12, 2015. ~ James Manheim, Rovi