Reginald Foort

Reginald John Foort (21 January 1893 – 22 May 1980) was a cinema organist. He was the first official BBC Staff Theatre Organist from 1936 to 1938, during which time he made 405 broadcasts on the organ at St George's Hall, Langham Place. He was a popular broadcaster in his heyday in the late 1930s and 1940s in Britain, and later settled in the United States, where he also enjoyed a career of performing and recording.

Biography

Foort was born in Daventry, England, on 21 January 1893. His father was a church organist (leading Foort to joke later that he was 'born an organist'). Foort learnt the piano from the age of seven and took up the organ at eleven after his family moved to Rugby, studying with Basil Johnson, Master of Music at Rugby School.

In 1930, Foort became solo organist at the Regal, Marble Arch, performing on a Christie organ. which was first set up at the Drury Lane Theatre, London They subsequently purchased it in 1946, erecting it at the Jubilee Hall, London.

Broadcasts and recordings

Foort made his first broadcast from Marconi House, playing the piano, on January 15, 1923. His most famous broadcasts and recordings in the UK were in 1936-8 on his Möller organ, as the BBC Staff Theatre Organist.

In 2004, Phoenix Historic Records was set up by William Henry Lewis (1924-2021) to bring his collection of Foort 78 records to a wider audience through digitally remastered CD editions. The featured melodies, medleys and excerpts are by a wide range of composers of classical and light music, including Addinsell, Amers, Bizet, Brahms, Chopin, Coates, Delibes, Donaldson, Drigo, Friml, Green, Handel, Hanley-Mills, Harline, Joyce, Kahn-Woods, Ketelby, Kilmer-Rasbach, Klein-Dillon, Nevin, Orth, Purcell, Rombert, Rossini, Schubert, Simons-Marks, Sullivan, Suppé, Taylor-Fisher, Tobias-DeRose, Toselli, Wagner, Haydn Wood, Yradier and Zalva. The CD titles are as follows:

Reginald Foort at the organ of the Regal Cinema, Kingston-on-Thames (1932-33) Reginald Foort on his giant Möller concert organ (1938-42), volumes I-VI

Foort made many recordings while in the US, in Virginia, Chicago, Pasadena (California) and other locations. He described his first LP, recorded at Boston Symphony Hall, as his finest recording (despite temperatures on the night having been around ).