In this no-nonsense, down-to-earth account of writing music for Northern Ballet Theatre’s production of Aladdin, choreographed by Laverne Meyer in 1974, composer Ernest Tomlinson talks to Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet. The interview is introduced by Stephen Johnson.

Ernest Tomlinson was a British composer, well known for his contributions to light music and for founding The Library of Light Orchestral Music (which prevented the loss of 50,000 works released from the BBC’s archive and other collections). He wrote the music for the ballet Aladdin for Northern Ballet Theatre in 1974.

Tomlinson was born in 1924, in Rawtenstall, Lancashire. His parents were musical, and he sang as a chorister at Manchester Cathedral. After a grammar school education, he studied at Manchester University and the Royal Manchester School of Music, with a break for war service in the RAF. He moved to London after graduation in 1947, working first for music publishers. In 1955, after some of his compositions had been performed by the BBC, he formed his own orchestra – the Ernest Tomlinson Light Orchestra – and set out on a highly successful freelance career as a prolific composer, conductor and director of choirs and orchestras. He was particularly concerned to counter the notion of a strict division between art music and popular music. His own Sinfonia 62 was written for jazz band and symphony orchestra, while his Symphony 65 was performed at festivals in London and Munich and in the Soviet Union in 1966, where it was the first symphonic jazz to be heard there. In 1975, Tomlinson won his second Ivor Novello Award for his ballet, Aladdin. Among many other professional appointments, he was the chairman of the Light Music Society from 1966 until 2009. Ernest Tomlinson was appointed an MBE for his services to music in 2012.

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