Tommy Reilly

Tommy Reilly (August 21 1919 - September 25 2000) was a Canadian classical harmonica player.

Early life

Born in Guelph, Ontario, he studied violin at eight and began playing harmonica at aged eleven as a member of his father's band. In 1935 the family moved to London. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was a student at the Leipzig Conservatory. Reilly was arrested and interned for the duration of the war in prisoner of war camps. However it was there that he developed his virtuosity on the harmonica, basing his ideas of phrasing and interpretation on the playing of Jascha Heifetz.

Returning to London in 1945, Reilly began championing the cause of the harmonica as a serious solo concert instrument. He began parallel careers as a concert soloist and recitalist, a popular BBC radio and TV performer, and a studio musician-composer. He performed with most of the major European orchestras and toured Europe several times with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Later career

Over 30 concert works have been composed for Reilly, including fellow Canadians Michael Spivakovsky's Harmonica Concerto of 1951 (considered the first important full-scale concerto for harmonica), and Robert Farnon's "Prelude and Dance for Harmonica and Orchestra". Other pieces were composed for him by Reilly's accompanist James Moody, Matyas Seiber ("Old Scottish Air for Harmonica, Strings and Harp"), and Sir Richard Rodney Bennett ("Suite for harmonica and piano"). Reilly himself transcribed works by Bach, Chopin and Mozart amongst others, for the harmonica. Reilly worked with many composers to get more original music written for the instrument, including Villa-Lobos.

His first recording, for Parlophone, was produced by Sir George Martin in 1951. He also performed music for the soundtracks of many US and European films and for several US TV series. Among the composers who wrote film scores for Reilly were Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein and Dimitri Tiomkin.

Reilly developed and invented much of the playing technique which is common today. He wrote a handbook "Play like the Stars", about playing classical style on the chromatic harmonica.

In 1967 Reilly participated in the development of the first Hohner silver harmonica, which became the de-facto standard concert instrument for many years and which Hohner has made with few adjustments ever since.

One of his final projects was on the 1989 Swing Out Sister album "Kaleidoscope World" where he was soloist on the instrumental track "Forever Blue". He died aged 81 in Frensham, Surrey.