Allyn Ferguson obit
Allyn Ferguson, a prolific, Emmy-winning composer who co-wrote the themes for the popular TV series "Charlie's Angels" and "Barney Miller," has died. He was 85.
Allyn Ferguson established himself as one of America's foremost men of music. Equally at home composing award-winning scores for film and television, arranging for jazz and big band records and conducting for symphony orchestra, he had a long and illustrious career that is testimony to his mastery of both the classical and jazz idioms.
Ferguson's musical training began at the age of four with trumpet lessons from the father of the legendary jazz musician Red Nichols. At seven he began serious study of the piano and was concertizing at twelve. About that time, he began to be interested in writing and playing jazz, which eventually led to associations with Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn, Freddie Hubbard, Ella Fitzgerald and many other jazz greats.
He studied with Nadia Boulanger in France and with Ernst Toch and Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, where his piano concerto won a scholarship award. He obtained BA and MA degrees in music and composition from San Jose State University, after which he taught composition and piano at Stanford University while pursuing a PhD Degree. While at Stanford, Allyn formed the noted Chamber Jazz Sextet and became very active in the experimental Poetry-and-Jazz movement. He then moved from Stanford to Los Angeles where he emersed himself in all phases of the music industry, from recordings to live performances to television and motion picture scores. At that time, Allyn began writing, arranging and conducting for the Academy Awards, the Grammy awards and the Emmy Awards.
Ferguson conducted symphony orchestras extensively, both here and abroad, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The New London Symphony, The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The San Jose Symphony Orchestra, The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, The Vienna Symphony Orchestra, The Glendale Symphony Orchestra, and The Bohemian Club Symphony Orchestra, where he is a resident conductor.
Ferguson also wrote a significant body of original work for symphony and chamber orchestras, including Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Statements for Orchestra, Mood Swings Suite for String Orchestra, Three Movements for Tenor Sax and Orchestra, Pentavelance, a chamber orchestra piece commissioned for the 1984 Olympics, Love You Madly, a medley of Ellington songs orchestrated for the L.A. Philharmonic and I Remember, a five-movement suite for alto saxophone, double bass and orchestra embodying Ferguson's impressions of Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Bob Cooper and Charlie Parker.
Ferguson wrote over seventy-five movie scores, many of which have won or been nominated for awards. Some of his more memorable ones include The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Four Feathers, All Quiet on the Western Front, Les Miserables (Emmy nomination), Camille (Emmy nomination), The Corsican Brothers, Romance on the Orient Express, The Last Days of Patton (Emmy nomination), April Morning (Emmy nomination) and Pancho Barnes (Emmy nomination).
Allyn Ferguson sat on the executive board of the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and served on the ASMAC Board of Directors.
Obituary:
Ferguson, who also was known as an arranger and conductor, died of natural causes June 23 at his home in Westlake Village, said his daughter, Jill Ferguson.
Teamed with composer Jack Elliott in a television scoring partnership, Ferguson and Elliott wrote the themes for "Charlie's Angels" and "Barney Miller" in the 1970s as well as scores for episodes of numerous other series, including "The Rookies," "Starsky and Hutch," "Police Story" and "Banacek."
On his own in the 1970s and '80s, Ferguson scored many of producer Norman Rosemont's TV adaptations of literary classics such as "A Tale of Two Cities," "The Count of Monte Cristo," "Les Miserables" and "Camille," for which Ferguson won an Emmy in 1985.
He received five other Emmy nominations for music composition in the '80s -- for "Ivanhoe," "Master of the Game," "The Last Days of Patton," "April Morning" and "Pancho Barnes."
"Allyn will always be remembered as the co-writer of two iconic television themes," said Jon Burlingame, author of "TV's Biggest Hits," a 1996 book that chronicles the history of television themes. "But I think his real strength was in writing large-scale orchestral scores for Rosemont.
"He'd often write lavish orchestral scores, some very swashbuckling in nature, that helped to set the mood and place the viewer in the proper period. It was great stuff; he was really good at this."
During the '70s and '80s, Ferguson served stints as conductor and musical co-director for the Oscar, Emmy and Grammy award telecasts. He also received an Emmy nomination for music direction for "The American Movie Awards" in 1982 and shared an Emmy nomination for music direction for "The Kennedy Center Honors" in 1986.
Ferguson and Elliott, who wrote the scores for the movies "Support Your Local Gunfighter" and "Get to Know Your Rabbit," also co-founded the Orchestra, an 84-piece ensemble that debuted at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 1979.
"Its primary thrust was a combination of symphonic and jazz-influenced pieces they were commissioning," said Burlingame. "I think the Orchestra was a grand experiment, and I'm sorry it didn't last."
Ferguson, who moved to Hollywood in 1958, was an arranger for artists including Sarah Vaughan, Stan Kenton and Andy Williams and wrote the arrangements for the Count Basie Orchestra's 1998 Grammy-winning "Count Plays Duke" album. He also was a musical director for Johnny Mathis, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Julie Andrews and others.
In the late '80s, Ferguson assumed a leadership role in the Grove School of Music in Van Nuys, where he launched a film music composition course. The school went out of business in the early '90s.
Born in San Jose on Oct. 18, 1924, Ferguson started taking trumpet lessons and at age 4 and began studying piano seriously at 7.
He became a P-38 pilot during World War II but the war ended before he saw action. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music from San Jose State University and studied music with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood in Massachusetts.
While working toward a doctorate at Stanford University in the early 1950s, he formed the Chamber Jazz Sextet, which performed in the Bay Area and recorded three albums, including one with original jazz works accompanying poems by Kenneth Patchen.
In addition to his daughter, Ferguson is survived by his wife, Joline; his sons, Dan and Todd; his sister, Marilyn Dallman; and six grandchildren.
