John Gardner

John Gardner gallery


Above- four portraits of John Gardner taken over a period of about 20 years, from the late 1940s to the late 1960s

John Gardner, Malcolm Williamson, Richard Rodney Bennett and Edmund Rubbra

In the pit at Covent Garden in 1962. l. to r. John Gardner, Bronislava Nijinska Malcolm Williamson, Richard Rodney Bennett and John Lanchbery. Edmund Rubbra is seated at the piano. The four composers were playing the piano parts for a production of Stravinsky's Les Noces

John Gardner 1980s portrait

A portrait of John Gardner in the 1980s.

John Gardner and David Drummond, 1997

John Gardner and the conductor David Drummond on the occasion of the 80th Birthday Concert in St John's Smith Square, London, in 1997

Left: John Gardner conducting the Choir of the European Summer School for Young Musicians (ESSYM), in Austria, in August 1967. Malcolm Arnold was also on the staff, and at the final concert in the Theater an Der Wien, Gardner conducted his Five Hymns in Popular Style whilst Arnold conducted his own 2nd Symphony.

Left: As many people will remember him, John Gardner the choral conductor. This picture was taken at the Canford Summer School, sometime in the 1960s. As Gardner told Martin Anderson in a published interview in the late 1990s "I think I am probably a choral composer more than anything, really. I ran my own choir and I've done a lot of summer schools and things, running choirs. I don't do it anymore now, but I think I was rather good at making people sing, and I rather like the act of singing myself."

Photograph by Geoffrey Franglen