Robert Farnon

Robert Joseph Farnon (24 July 191723 April 2005) was a Canadian composer, conductor, musical arranger and trumpet player. As well as being a composer of original works (often in the light music genre), he was commissioned by film and television producers for theme and incidental music. In later life he composed a number of more serious orchestral works, including three symphonies, and was recognised with four Ivor Novello awards and the Order of Canada.

Life Robert Farnon was born in Toronto to Robert and Elsie Farnon (née Menzies). He was commissioned as a captain in the Canadian Army and became the conductor/arranger of the Canadian Band of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force sent overseas during World War II. This was the Canadian equivalent of the American Band of the SHAEF led by Major Glenn Miller. He was noted as a jazz trumpeter – his longtime friend Dizzy Gillespie once stated that he was pleased that Farnon took up composing, arranging and conducting, because Robert was the better jazz trumpeter.

He married Joanne Dallas, a singer from the SHAEF band, whom he later divorced. At the end of the war Farnon resided in Britain, and he later moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands with his new wife Patricia Smith and his five children. His friend and fellow composer Angela Morley composed "A Canadian in Mayfair" as a tribute.

From the early 1960s, Farnon was a prominent orchestral arranger for vocalists. He arranged and conducted Frank Sinatra's only album recorded outside of the United States, Sinatra Sings Great Songs from Great Britain (1962), in London. Farnon also arranged and conducted Lena Horne's album Lena: A New Album (1976), Tony Bennett's Christmas album Snowfall (1968), and one of Sarah Vaughan's albums recorded in Denmark, Vaughan with Voices (1964).

He also completed three full-length classical symphonies, a concerto for piano and orchestra called Cascades to the Sea, a rhapsody for violin and orchestra and a concerto for bassoon;

Selected filmography