John Wilson scores a big hit

John Wilson’s childhood in front of the TV has paid off handsomely as his orchestra is in demand for its authentic renderings of movie music

As A NIPPER growing up on Tyneside, John Wilson eschewed the boyhood lure of sport on telly, preferring instead to spend his Saturday afternoons glued to old MGM movie reruns, soaking up the extravagant musical soundtracks that were to shape his future career as a conductor and arranger.

For unlike others who attended the same Gateshead school – Paul Gascoigne among them – Wilson found that the dazzling solo run of a horn countermelody in Singin’ in the Rain, or the crack team of musicians listed prominently in the rolling credits, held far more fascination for him than studying the form of Newcastle United.

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It was an obsession that would stand him in good stead. Wilson now has his own custom-built orchestra – the John Wilson Orchestra (JWO) – which has become an annual smash hit at the BBC Proms; has just released its first EMI recording, receiving a five-star review in this newspaper; and throughout this week and next, is winging its way around the UK on a sell-out whistle-stop tour featuring the music that defines what Wilson calls “the golden age of Hollywood” – those musical soundtracks written between 1929 and 1969 for the premiere league Hollywood studios.

“Actually, the one place that is selling slowly is Edinburgh,” Wilson confesses with some concern. “Everywhere else, including Glasgow, there are only a few seats left.” For those in Edinburgh still swithering, or simply unaware that Wilson’s glittering musical circus is in Scotland next week (on 6 December at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and on 7 December at the Usher Hall), believe me, you don’t want to miss it. It will be a night to remember.

Wilson’s unflagging passion for Hollywood music is mostly responsible for that. For almost 20 years now he has pursued a one-man mission to rescue lost scores and reinstate them in a form that makes it possible to perform them as closely to the original as possible.

The story of his quest has been well documented. When he approached Warner Brothers, the custodians of the copyright to MGM scores such as The Wizard of Oz or his personal favourites Singin’ in the Rain and Ziegfeld Follies, he was told that the entire collection of orchestral parts had been consigned in 1969, along with the demolished library that housed them, to a landfill site in California in order to make way for a car park.

Undeterred, and aware that reduced versions of the scores existed in the archives of the University of Southern California, Wilson set about the arduous task of restoring the full scores, principally by listening to the soundtracks over and over again and picking out every minute detail of orchestration by ear and writing it down.

It was a labour of love that not only gave new life to these amazing musical scores (everything from High Society and Easter Parade to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Gigi), but it afforded Wilson an extraordinary insight into the musical and political process involved in producing what each big film company called its in-house style.

The composers were just one important cog in a well-oiled engine. “Relationships would certainly exist between the composers and the producers, such as Cole Porter and Arthur Freed,” he says. “But in the end, I’m not sure that the composers had much to do at all with the finished product. I can only think of one instance where the composer saw the whole thing through from start to finish, and that was André Previn with It’s Always Fair Weather.”

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“Generally, though, people like Johnny Green, MGM’s head of music, would have decided on the style and treatment of the music for his studio. Beneath him were a team of amazing orchestrators who would take the composers’ work and shape it into its final format, often rewriting sections at a minute’s notice to accommodate changes demanded by the producer.”

“The heads of music held enormous sway in the studios as a whole. 20th Century Fox’s Alfred Newman [composer of the 20th Century Fox fanfare] was the most powerful of the lot; after the chief executive he wielded the most authority. Every studio was fiercely proud and protective of its in-house style.”

And every studio employed the very best musicians for their in-house orchestras. “They were big, and they were incredibly good, in most cases retaining the same players for decades, who were able to sight read even the most complex and sophisticated music,” says Wilson, who insisted on the same top-notch standards when founding his own orchestra in 1994.

He didn’t have to look very far for the calibre of players he wanted. Wilson, after studying composition at the Royal College of Music, was already making a name for himself as a conductor and arranger. “I found that section principals from a lot of the UK orchestras – the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra included – were writing and asking if they could be part of it all.”

Yet the JWO remained very much a hidden gem, performing in hotels and small theatres, and graduating to the South Bank before finally taking the musical world by storm with its BBC Proms debut in 2009, and a concert to mark the 75th Anniversary of MGM that was watched by millions on television.

“After that night, our plans went barmy, and letters came flooding into the BBC for almost a year after,” Wilson says. “It took us 15 years to become an overnight sensation.”

The Proms success was repeated again this year, the orchestra joined once more by the Maida Vale Singers and a host of charismatic soloists, followed by the release of the highly acclaimed CD.

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It’s taken Wilson a while to get to this point in his career: “I spent a long time doing everything a jobbing conductor-for-hire would be expected to do, but now it’s wonderful to be doing these tours with the music I love and an orchestra that loves it as much as I do.”

Looks like all those Saturdays spent in front of old movies have finally paid off.

• The John Wilson UK 2011 Tour “Hooray for Hollywood” is at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on 6 December, and at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh on 7 December. See www.johnwilsonorchestra.com