Don Walker (orchestrator)

Don Walker (October 28, 1907 – September 12, 1989) was a prolific Broadway orchestrator, who also composed music for musicals and one film and worked as a conductor in television.

Walker was born in Lambertville, New Jersey. He attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Audrey, had a daughter, Anne Liebgold, and a son, David. Walker died in New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1989 at the age of 81.

As with many of the other great orchestrators, Walker served a long apprenticeship with Max Dreyfus at Chappell Music's arranging department starting in the 1930s, until he finally went out in business for himself in the early 1950s setting up office in New York City.

Among the scores that he orchestrated were those for the popular musicals Carousel, Finian's Rainbow, Call Me Madam, The Pajama Game, The Music Man, Fiddler on the Roof, Shenandoah and Cabaret, as well as cult failures like Anyone Can Whistle and The Gay Life. He was known for trying to give each Broadway score a unique and appropriate sound style, which he often accomplished by giving a lot of prominence to a distinctive instrument, like the accordion in Fiddler on the Roof or the cimbalom in The Gay Life. In Anyone Can Whistle, he used a string section with five cellos and no violins or violas. Like other busy orchestrators, Walker sometimes turned to assistants to score selected numbers that he didn't have time to do; several major orchestrators, including Irwin Kostal and Robert Ginzler, got their start working for him.

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