Howard Goodall is one of Britain’s leading composers. Almost everyone knows his popular TV themes for Blackadder, Mr Bean, Red Dwarf or The Vicar of Dibley, not to mention The Gathering Storm (HBO-BBC 2002) and The Borrowers (Working Title-BBC).
In the theatre his musicals have been performed throughout the world. The Hired Man, which he wrote with Melvyn Bragg in 1984, won The Ivor Novello Award for Best Musical (1985), four Olivier Award nominations, in Holland a John Kraaijkamp Musical Award (2001), and seven Waterford International Musical Festival awards. Recently, The Kissing-Dance and The Dreaming were both commissioned by the National Youth Music Theatre and toured extensively after seasons at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden Linbury Theatre.
Howard Goodall is a prodigious writer of choral music, including One Choice Away for the 1995 VE-Day Commemorations in London’s Hyde Park, I Believe in the Sun and In Memoriam Anne Frank for the 2001 National Holocaust Memorial Concert. The settings of Psalm 23 and Love Divine are among his most performed works. In 2002 the BBC Proms featured a commission from Howard as part of the Jubilee ‘Oriana’ project. He also writes and presents his own music documentaries for Channel 4. Howard Goodall’s Great Dates was aired simultaneously in the UK and Australia in 2002. Howard Goodall’s Big Bangs of 2000 won the BAFTA Huw Weldon award in the UK, a Peabody award (USA) for Journalism & Mass Communication, and an IMZ TV award for Best Documentary (Austria).