Gordon Dale
Biography
Gordon was born in Wrexham and began his musical activities at an early age. By the time he was 11, several of his piano pieces had been broadcast on B.B.C. Children's Hour programmes. Besides piano, he also studied violin (Sylvia Cleaver), woodwind (Michael Krein) and conducting (Douglas Guest). He was musical director of the Handel Orchestra and also conducted the Jacques Orchestra as well as playing violin professionally. He moved into teaching which prompted his interest in writing music for his pupils and at age 33 became Britain's youngest music adviser in Dorset. Latterly he has concentrated on composing and still taught a few pupils until recently. His increasing problems with arthritis forced him to give up performing.
He last conducted in the late 1980s when he conducted several first performances of his works with the Staffordshire Chamber Orchestra. In 1999 Gordon suffered a serious stroke and was in a nursing home in Hereford where he still took a keen interest in all things musical - and cricket.
Gordon's music is always melodic and sensitively written for the instruments or voices and its apparant simplicity often masks subtleties of timbre which only emerge in performance. He never specified metronome speeds reasoning that a musician will know when a speed is right for the music.
