Lindley Evans

Lindley Evans CMG (18 November 1895 – 2 December 1982) was a South African-born Australian composer, pianist and teacher. He is best known for his collaboration with Frank Hutchens in a famous piano duet, which lasted 41 years, and as the ABC's "Mr Melody Man" for 30 years.

Harry Lindley Evans was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1895, to English parents. He had already become an organist and chorister before moving to Sydney at the age of 17. He studied at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music to advance his keyboard technique with Frank Hutchens. He also taught piano privately. He later studied with Tobias Matthay in London.

Evans developed as an accompanist, playing with the flautist John Lemmoné and the opera singer Dame Nellie Melba on her tours of England and Australia, from 1922 until her death in 1931. He always played from memory.

From 1920 to 1929, Evans also taught at a private girls' school. He later adapted his lectures in music appreciation as scripts for an ABC radio program called Adventures in Music.

In the 1920s he joined Frank Hutchens in a two-piano partnership, which lasted from 1924 until Hutchens' death in 1965. They performed standard piano duet works as well as some of their own compositions, all played from memory. He and Hutchens included the young and then unknown Joan Hammond on one of their tours to Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmania, over the ABC's misgivings.

Evans joined the Conservatorium in 1928 as a teacher. Colleagues included the pianist and composer Isador Goodman, who was also from Cape Town, and they became firm friends. Evans taught at the school for 40 years. From 1930 to 1946 Evans was a visiting teacher at MLC School, Burwood.

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