Barry Gray

Barry Gray (July 18, 1908 in Lancashire, England - April 26, 1984 in Guernsey, Channel Islands) was a British musician and composer who is best known for his work for Gerry Anderson.

Life

He was born into a musical family and was greatly encouraged to pursue a musical career from a very early age. Starting at the age of five - with piano lessons - he studied diligently and became a student at the Manchester Royal College of Musiccite web
url=http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=160824
last=Eder
first=Bruce
title=Barry Gray - Filmography - Movies - New York Times
publisher=New York Times/All Movie Guide
accessdate=2006-08-28] and at Blackburn Cathedral. He studied composition under the Hungarian teacher, Matyas Sieber.

Gray's first professional job was in London for B.Feldman & Co., where he gained valuable experience in scoring for theatre and variety orchestras. From there, he joined Radio Normandy as a composer-arranger. After serving six years with the RAF during World War II he returned to the music industry to work with such worthies as Vera Lynn and Hoagy Carmichael.

In the 1956 he joined Gerry Anderson's AP Films, where he first scored the puppet show, "The Adventures of Twizzle". This was followed by "Torchy The Battery Boy" and then the famed "Four Feather Falls", a puppet Western based on a concept suggested by Gray.

Gray's association with Gerry Anderson lasted well in to the 1970s. Perhaps most famous for his score to "Thunderbirds" and its theme "March of the Thunderbirds", Gray composed the themes to the other Supermarionation shows such as "Stingray", "Fireball XL5", "Joe 90", and "Captain Scarlet". Additionally, Gray is also known as the composer for the Anderson live-action shows, such as "UFO" and "", as well as the Thunderbirds films and the live action "Doppelgänger" of 1969. Gray's professional association with Anderson ended following the first season of "Space: 1999" when Anderson decided to replace Gray's original theme with one by another composer.

Composing style

Gray's music is characterised by the use of brass and percussion sections, and made extensive use of leitmotifs, for example themes for the individual machines in "Thunderbirds" or the eponymous title character in "Joe 90", who was accompanied onscreen by a wordless representation of the character's name. The ensembles required for Gray's scoring in series such as "Thunderbirds" and "Stingray" dwarfed those of most contemporary television shows; even the orchestra employed for the first supermarionation series, "Supercar", comprised some forty instrumentalists.

In addition to composing and conducting orchestral scores, he also became interested in the Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument that had been developed by Frenchman Maurice Martenot, and used it to produce unconventional musical sounds as well as electronic sound effects in several of his scores, particularly "Captain Scarlet" and the feature film "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun". His expertise and recognition in the field led to his providing electronic music and sound effects for such films as "Dr. Who and the Daleks" and "Daleks Invasion of Earth", and uncredited work on "Fahrenheit 451".imdb name
id=0336460
name=Barry Gray]

The Gerry Anderson Appreciation Society, Fanderson, has recently gained access to all of Gray's original studio tapes and is undertaking a major reissue project, compiling the themes and incidental music from Gray's various Anderson projects on a series of remastered CDs.

Discography

* "Space Age Nursery Rhymes" (mini-EP, Century 21, Comical updates of nursery rhymes, sung by Ken Barrie and Eula Parker, "Three refined mice" sung by Gray)
* "Themes from Thunderbirds" (mini-EP, Century 21, record with incidental music)
* "Themes from Captain Scarlet" (mini-EP, Century 21, record with songs and instrumentals of the series and some cover versions of non-Anderson series)
* "No Strings Attached" (maxi-single. A release of all the commercial recordings of theme music, near-originals. The CD release also includes "March of the Oysters")
* "Thunderbirds Are Go!" (LP, United Artists, film soundtrack with pieces from the TV series; not the original film recording. The EMI CD release also include The Shadows tracks of the feature film)
* "Thunderbird 6" (CD MGM, film soundtrack, released posthumously)
* "Thunderbirds" (CD, Silva Screen, TV soundtrack, released posthumously)
* "Captain Scarlet" (CD, Silva Screen, TV soundtrack, released posthumously)
* "Space: 1999" (CD, Silva Screen, TV soundtrack, released posthumously)
* "Joe 90" (CD, Silva Screen, TV soundtrack, released posthumously)
* "Supercar/Fireball XL5" (CD, Fanderson, original incidental music from the series, released posthumously)
* "UFO" (2CD, Fanderson, original incidental music from the series, released posthumously)
* "Space:1999 Year 1" (2CD, Fanderson, original incidental music from the series, released posthumously)
* "Sleeping Astronauts" (CD, membership gift Fanderson 2005, original incidental music from various Gerry Anderson series. Also includes some tracks not by Barry Gray)
* "International Concerto" (CD, membership gift Fanderson 2006, original incidental music from various Gerry Anderson series. Also includes tracks not by Barry Gray)

References

External links

* [http://www.fanderson.org.uk/fansales/fansale.html#CD Fanderson Sales]