Howard Blake grew up in Sussex, at 18 winning the Hastings Festival Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, of which he is now a Fellow. He worked initially as a composer and conductor for television and cinema. Within his prolific output are many fine film scores, including Ridley Scott’s The Duellists, which gained the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, and A Month in the Country, for which he was awarded the BFI Anthony Asquith Award for musical excellence.
In the theatre he has composed for the Royal Shakespeare Company (including Kenneth Branagh’s original Henry V and Adrian Noble’s film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and ballet scores for London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Ballet Rambert and The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet.
In 1982 he wrote both words and music for The Snowman, which was instantly acclaimed as a masterpiece. The concert version is performed world-wide, and both the video and CD are perennial best sellers. There is also a ballet and a hit stage show, produced in London’s West End and filmed for international television and video release. The haunting theme song Walking in the Air is prized the world over. It achieved a unique status among singles in the UK when at its first release two recordings of it charted at the same time.
Equally successful in their own field have been Blake’s choral compositions, which have found a special place in the choral repertory and are widely performed. Blake's orchestral works have been played by all major British orchestras. He has enjoyed a special relationship with the Philharmonia, who have given two complete concerts of his music at the Royal Festival Hall and commissioned him to compose a Piano Concerto for Princess Diana's 30th birthday. Blake was himself the soloist in the gala premiere in 1991 in her presence and on the CD. His Violin Concerto, premiered in the 1993 Leeds International Concert Season, was described by the world’s leading magazine for string players, The Strad, as “unequivocally great music, accessible, expressive and ravishingly beautiful”.
Blake’s output also includes numerous songs and a fine body of chamber and instrumental music. In recognition of his services to music, in all its forms, Howard Blake was awarded the OBE in 1994.