Peter Knight (composer)

Peter Knight (23 June 1917 – 30 July 1985) was an English musical arranger, conductor and composer.

Knight was born in Exmouth, Devon, England. He worked with Independent Television light entertainment stars from 'Spot The Tune' (1956) with Jackie Rae and Marion Ryan to the comedy series 'Home to Roost' (1985). He also composed the scores to the feature films Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968, Boris Karloff) and Sunstruck (1972, Harry Secombe). In between, the highlights of his career were perhaps:

His entree to acceptance by his peers was his 6 piece vocal group: two sopranos [Pat Clark and Elizabeth Humphries, graduates of the Royal Academy of Music], 2 altos (one his wife Babs, the other his sister-in-law Daph), a tenor [Charles Young "Pinky" of "Pinky & Perky"] and baritone Charles Granville all of whose singular quality was the ability to pick up the "dots" and read them, just like any other session musician!

After producing countless vocal scores, Peter Knight began to be commissioned to produce full orchestrations for all kinds of artists and soon had his own orchestra 'The Peter Knight Orchestra '.

Following his death, Yorkshire television launched the annual Peter Knight award to honour excellence in musical arranging.

His involvement with pop music was varied. Peter Knight became famous for his rich lush orchestration, best illustrated by the slightly spaced-out sections of The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed. Later on he continued his work with members of The Moody Blues, Justin Hayward and John Lodge, on 3 songs on the record "Blue Jays" released in 1975.

Richard Carpenter invited him to fly to Los Angeles in 1977 in order to generate a similar sound for The Carpenters "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" (1977). There is some kind of private joke here, since the album credits him with conducting the humorously-named "Overbudget Philharmonic", which was actually the L.A. Philharmonic. He gave a similar treatment to The Carpenters version of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina".

...
Wikipedia