Music / Co-Orchestrator
Howard Goodall’s first West End musical, The Hired Man, based on Melvyn Bragg’s book, opened in 1984, when Howard was 24. It has since been performed all over the world and won many international awards. It was followed by Girlfriends (1987), Days of Hope (1990), Silas Marner (1993), The Kissing-Dance (1998), The Dreaming (2001) – both written with Charles Hart for the NYMT – A Winter’s Tale (2005), Two Cities (2006), and Love Story in 2010, which recently completed tours in the Netherlands and the Russian Federation.
As well as writing musicals, Howard has composed some of the best-known TV theme tunes of the last 30 years, including Mr Bean, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Q.I. and The Vicar of Dibley. His score for the HBO film Into the Storm won him a Primetime EMMY award for Original Dramatic Score in 2009.
His music has been commissioned to mark many national ceremonies and memorials and his choral works, Psalm 23 and Love Divine, are amongst the most performed of all sacred music, featuring on several platinum-selling CDs. His Eternal Light: A Requiem has had over 400 live performances throughout the world since its première in 2008, and won him a Classical BRIT Award for Composer of the Year. His 2009 Enchanted Voices, a setting of the Beatitudes, was no.1 in the Specialist Classical CD chart for 6 months, winning him a Gramophone award. In June 2012 his Rigaudon formed part of the New Water Music that accompanied Queen Elizabeth II on her Diamond Jubilee Regatta, and he was musically responsible for Rowan Atkinson’s memorable performance at the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. On 4th August 2014 his choral work Sure of the Sky – Des Himmels sicher, specially commissioned for the occasion, was performed by an Anglo-German choir at the St Symphorien Military Cemetery to commemorate the start of the First World War.