Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.
Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell was a British film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. His films were mainly liberal adaptations of existing texts, or biographies, notably of composers of the Romantic era. Russell began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. He also directed many feature films independently and for studios.
The Devils is a 1971 historical drama horror film written, produced and directed by Ken Russell, and starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed. A dramatised historical account of the fall of Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century Roman Catholic priest accused of witchcraft after the possessions in Loudun, France, the plot also focuses on Sister Jeanne des Anges, a sexually repressed nun who incites the accusations.
The Music Lovers is a 1971 British drama film directed by Ken Russell and starring Richard Chamberlain and Glenda Jackson. The screenplay by Melvyn Bragg, based on Beloved Friend, a collection of personal correspondence edited by Catherine Drinker Bowen and Barbara von Meck, focuses on the life and career of 19th-century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was one of the director's biographical films about classical composers, which include Elgar (1962), Delius: Song of Summer (1968), Mahler (1974) and Lisztomania (1975), made from an often idiosyncratic standpoint.
Kenneth Colley is an English film and television actor whose career spans over 60 years. He came to wider prominence through his role as Admiral Piett in the Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), as well as his roles in the films of Ken Russell and as Jesus in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward.
Sir Huw Pyrs Wheldon, was a Welsh broadcaster and BBC executive.
Lisztomania is a 1975 British surreal biographical musical comedy film written and directed by Ken Russell about the 19th-century composer Franz Liszt. The screenplay is derived, in part, from the book Nélida by Marie d'Agoult (1848), about her affair with Liszt.
Mahler is a 1974 British biographical film based on the life of Austro-Bohemian composer Gustav Mahler. It was written and directed by Ken Russell for Goodtimes Enterprises, and starred Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler and Georgina Hale as Alma Mahler. The film was entered into the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Technical Grand Prize.
Elgar is a British drama documentary made in 1962 by the British director Ken Russell for BBC Television's Monitor series. It dramatised in vigorous style the life of the English composer Sir Edward Elgar.
Monitor is a British arts television programme that was launched on 2 February 1958 on BBC and ran until 1965.
Ellis Briggs is a British bicycle manufacturer and shop, based in Shipley, West Yorkshire, England. It is the oldest bicycle shop in the Bradford area still in business today. Ellis Briggs have produced lightweight bicycles since 1936 and continue to do so. Ellis Briggs sprang to fame when the cyclist Ken Russell won the 1952 Tour of Britain on an Ellis Briggs.
"The Immortal Legions" is a poem written by Alfred Noyes, and set to music by the English composer Edward Elgar. It was one of the songs written to be performed in the Pageant of Empire at the British Empire Exhibition on 21 July 1924.
Song of Summer is a 1968 black-and-white television episode co-written, produced, and directed by Ken Russell for the BBC's Omnibus series which was first broadcast on 15 September 1968. It portrays the final six years of Frederick Delius' life, during which Eric Fenby lived with the composer and his wife Jelka as Delius's amanuensis. The title is borrowed from the Delius tone poem A Song of Summer, which is heard along with other Delius works on the film's soundtrack.
The Firs in Lower Broadheath, Worcestershire, England was the birthplace of Edward Elgar. The cottage now houses a museum administered by the National Trust. Edward Elgar was born at the house on 2 June 1857, and lived there for the first two years of his life. The museum comprises the Birthplace Cottage and its garden, and the modern Elgar Centre, opened in 2000, which houses further exhibitions and a function room.
This is a summary of 1962 in music in the United Kingdom, including the official charts from that year.
The Secret Life of Arnold Bax is a 1992 British TV movie directed by Ken Russell, who also stars in the title role as composer Arnold Bax. It was one of eight musical drama documentaries directed by Russell for The South Bank Show on London Weekend Television between 1983 and 2002. The film focuses on the composer's complicated relationship with pianist Harriet Cohen while at the same time seeking inspiration for his music from the dancer Annie. As with all of Russell's films on composers the drama serves as a showcase for the music. Set in 1948, when the film Oliver Twist had just been released, the film mostly uses earlier compositions such as The Garden of Fand, Tintagel and the Symphony No 2 as its soundtrack. Lewis Foreman was musical adviser.
Ken Russell's ABC of British Music is a 1988 British documentary directed by and featuring Ken Russell. It was broadcast as an edition of The South Bank Show on 2 April 1988. The film presents an A to Z selection of Russell's musical enthusiasms, using alphabetical coincidence to present widely contrasting subjects - Elgar and Elton John, Holst and Heavy Metal, Punk and Purcell. Participants include Russell himself introducing each letter, along with soprano Rita Cullis, Thomas Dolby, Evelyn Glennie, Nigel Kennedy, John Lill, Julian Lloyd Webber, Eric Parkin and the saxophone quartet The Fairer Sax.
The following is a list of unproduced Ken Russell projects in roughly chronological order. During his long career, British film director Ken Russell had worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these productions fell into development hell or were cancelled, while others were taken over and completed by other filmmakers.
