Composer: Goodall, Howard (b. 1958)

Howard Goodall is one of Britain’s most distinguished and versatile composers. Almost everyone knows at least one of Howard's popular TV themes for Blackadder, Mr Bean, Red Dwarf, The Catherine Tate Show, Q.I. or The Vicar of Dibley. Film scores include the BAFTA-nominated The Gathering Storm, Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie, Bernard and the Genie, Blacadder Back & Forth and Mr Bean's Holiday.

In the theatre his many musicals, from The Hired Man (1984) to Two Cities (2006) have been performed throughout the English-speaking world, including London’s West End and Off-Broadway, and won many international awards, including Ivor Novello and TMA Awards for Best Musical. In 2009 his A Winter's Tale will be seen around the country performed by Youth Music Theatre: UK, The Dreaming will be produced by National Youth Music Theatre, and in 2010 Love Story will have its professional première.

He is a prodigious writer of choral music, his settings of Psalm 23 and Love Divine are amongst the most performed of all sacred music, his works have been commissioned to mark several national ceremonies and memorials, and he has contributed songs to several platinum-selling CDs. Autumn 2008 saw the début UK tour of his Eternal Light: A Requiem by the Rambert Dance Company, a choral-orchestral ballet & concert work commissioned by London Musici, simultaneously released on an EMI Classics CD featuring the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford, Alfie Boe and Natasha Marsh, conducted by Stephen Darlington, which has earned Howard a Classical Brit nomination for Composer of the Year. His most recent Classic FM CD Enchanted Voices, a setting of the Beatitudes, has occupied the No. 1 slot of the Spcialist Classical CD Chart since its release on 23 March 2009.
Howard hosts his own weekly show on Classic FM, Howard Goodall On..., appears regularly on BBC TV music programmes and writes and presents his own highly-successful Channel 4 documentary series on the theory and history of music. For these six series he has been honoured by a BAFTA, an RTS Judges’ Prize and over a dozen other major international broadcast awards.

He is a tireless advocate for music education and a passionate believer in young people’s inherent musicality, receiving the 2007-8 Sir Charles Grove/Making Music Prize for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, a British Academy of Composers & Songwriters Gold Badge for exceptional work in support of his fellow composers, Honorary Doctorates of Music from Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln, and Bolton University, the Voice of the Listener & Viewer Naomi Sargant Memorial Award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Education in Broadcasting’ and in January 2007 he was appointed as England’s first ever National Ambassador for Singing, leading a 4-year programme (Sing Up) to improve the provision of group singing for all primary-age children.

Howard is Classic FM's Composer-in-Residence for 2009.

He is married to classical music agent Val Fancourt.

May 2009