Derek Wadsworth
A very great friend of more that forty years, the late Derek Wadsworth, who died on th 3 December 2008 at his home in Aynho, Northamptonshire, England.
Derek was to use the old but apt cliché: a musicians' musician.
Derek's career started as a member of a Brass Band in Yorkshire and was to develop into an astonishing CV that included jazz, pop music, television, film, orchestral arranging and conducting, choral work and much more. Just to give you a glimpse of the range of his achievement here are some of the names and projects he worked on:
Arranger to Judy Garland, Nina Simone with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the same with The King's Singers (including vocal scores), Kate Bush, Dusty Springfield, Shirley Bassey, Alan Price, Georgie Fame, Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, , Manfred Mann, The Small Faces, David Essex, Nigel Kennedy.
As musician, with George Harrison, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles (White Album), Diana Ross, Tom Jones, Charles Aznavour, Randy Crawford, Dionne Warwick, Simply Red, Tony Bennett, Maynard Ferguson, Alex Harvey, Mike Oldfield
My abiding memory of Derek during the later years of his life was his quiet concentration, sitting in an easy-chair by a window of his beautiful period house, pipe on the go, gazing out at the bird feeder on the wall outside the window.