William Blezard

William Blezard (10 March 1921 in Padiham, Lancashire – 2 March 2003 in Barnes, London) was a pianist and composer who was musical director to Noël Coward, Marlene Dietrich and Joyce Grenfell.

Personal life

Blezard's parents worked in one of Padiham's many cotton mills as weavers. Like many other local children, as a child he wore clogs, traditional for the area and not a sign of poverty. His tenor father sang semi-professionally.

In 1954 he married musical conductor Joan Kemp-Potter, whom he met at the Royal College. She was the conductor of the Leatherhead Choral Society and the Sutton Symphony Orchestra (1974-1992) as well as a teacher at the Guildhall School of Music and the London College of Music and an artist. She died in 2001, aged 80. He had cared for her after she had had a severe stroke in 1994. They had a son and daughter, known as Paul and Pookie. in 1950 starring Celia Johnson. Another was Beau Brummell, 1954, starring Stewart Granger, Peter Ustinov, Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Morley.

In 1954 Blezard had arranged a performance for two pianos with Donald Swann and Sydney Carter. Swann introduced him to Joyce Grenfell, and she engaged him as her musical director. During rehearsals the same year for the show "Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure", Blezard married the conductor Joan Kemp Potter. The show lasted for over a year, ending its West End run at St Martin's Theatre. The piano was so bad that Blezard asked the management to buy an upright Bechstein at Harrods' sale.

After this production, Grenfell decided that Blezard's piano skills were such that she no longer needed an orchestra as he could play any tune by ear, arrange it in any key or style and transcribe it on to paper without a piano. She wrote in her first, 1976, autobiography, "In Pleasant Places": "He is compounded of compressed energy, employed at its best when he is playing the piano, then it is wholly controlled. His familiarity with the keyboard has the naturalness of breathing; and he moves in it with confidence, dexterity and grace

From 1954 to 1973 he composed many of Grenfell's songs and spoof operettas such as Freda and Eric. They performed on stage and television all over Britain, America and Australia. He could play her entire repertoire from memory, even though she often changed the running order at the last moment. To warm up before a show they would improvise fake Debussy and mock Schubert; he learned to play over hailstorms in Melbourne, cowboy films in Sydney, bagpipes in Auckland and the police radio on Grenfell's mike.

Grenfell insisted on Blezard's getting equal credit, and would complain to the organisers if he was left off a poster or not mentioned in a review. She also pushed for higher fees, and persuaded the BBC to increase his fee from 10 to 200 guineas for two Cabaret television shows. Diana Lyddon, stage manager for Grenfell's 1960 British tour, said:"The venues were often town halls. They were all under contract to provide a tuned Steinway grand. As I was trying to fix the lighting, Bill would stomp in and say: 'Bloody awful piano again'. The next time we toured together I always checked in advance.

At Grenfell's last performance, at the Waterloo Dinner in Windsor Castle in June 1973, she insisted she would only dine with the Queen if the Blezards were also invited. The Queen chose the programme, including Blezard's favourite "The Battle March of Delhi", a melodramatic Victorian song involving colonels, marauders and bugles.

Grenfell supported the Blezard family in many ways: she bought them a dishwasher one Christmas; wrote birthday songs for their children, and contributed (unwittingly) to his son's first motorbike. Every summer, Joyce and Reggie Grenfell treated William and Joan to a week at the Aldeburgh Music Festival. For the royal opening of Snape Maltings concert hall in 1967, Blezard and Grenfell composed a surprise song for Benjamin Britten who was so overwhelmed that he burst into tears. with Nichola McAuliffe at the Wyndham's Theatre, and then played for Honor Blackman in The Life and Times of Yvette Guilbert and Dishonorable Ladies. Blezard and Blackman worked together for the next 10 years, Blackman said: "William was my staunch support and brilliant accompanist. No one, but no one will ever be as good."

He also wrote numerous piano and chamber music pieces spanning his entire career which are representative of many genres, styles and touches including Sonatinas, Preludes, Scherzi, numerous character pieces and a set of variations written in his later life dedicated to the American pianist Neil Galanter. His own favourite composition, written in 1951, was the dark, quasi-mahlerian Duetto (for string ensemble), which his wife Joan Kemp-Potter also considered his most accomplished work. His orchestral music, in which the influence of his hero Maurice Ravel is easily detectable, particularly in its harmonic patterns, has enjoyed a significant revival since the late 1990s after a long period of neglect. Most of his major works are now available on commercial recordings. William Blezard was also a prolific arranger, who collaborated on several occasions with pop singer-songwriter Louis Philippe towards the end of his life.

CD recordings

The Piano Music of William Blezard (2001) played by Eric Parkin, in two volumes (Priory Records, 1999, 2003) Battersea Park Suite, on the collection British Light Music Discoveries 4, (ASV, 2002) Caramba (1966), released on British Light Overtures (ASV, 2002) Duetto (1951), on English String Miniatures, Vol 3 (ASV, 2001) Noel and Gertie by Sir Noël Coward, William Blezard, Original London Cast (TER 1117, 1986) The River (1969), on The British Light Music Collection, Vol. 1 (Resonance, 2007) Soliloquy and Quirky Waltz, on The Oboe d'Amore Collection, Vol. 2 (Amoris International 1997) Two Celtic Pieces, on English Oboe Concertos (ASV, 2001)