Tony Haynes (10 July 1941 – 17 September 2024) was an English composer and bandleader best known for his work with

Grand Union Orchestra Grand Union Orchestra, also known as The Grand Union, is a multicultural World music, world jazz ensemble based in London. It has been performing, touring and recording large-scale shows for over 30 years and is well known for its educational work ...

since 1982. He played piano and trombone.

Early life

Tony Haynes's musical career began in 1954, as a 13-year-old piano and trombone player in dance bands earning £2–3 per show. He also had stints as a church organist and brass band trombonist, but playing jazz was a more formative experience. As a teenager in the 1950s, Haynes listened to early and modern jazz alongside a lot of European classical music. After studying music at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, Haynes took a postgraduate degree in contemporary music at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

, working simultaneously as musical director at the

Nottingham Playhouse Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England. It was first established as a repertory theatre in 1948 when it operated from a former cinema in Goldsmith Street. Directors during this period included Val May and F ...

and composing music for the resident repertory company's productions. In the late 1960s, Haynes visited Portugal as a working musician where he heard

Fado Fado (; "destiny, fate") is a music genre which can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar Rui Vieira Nery states that "the only reliable information on the history of fado ...

and Bossa nova courtesy of Lisbon students and a Brazilian musician. Returning to the country in 1975, shortly after the revolution, Haynes met musicians from the former Portuguese colonies Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, and Mozambique.

Theatrical work

After stints as musical director at

and the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, Haynes wrote music for all the UK's major regional repertory theatres and touring companies, including the

Royal Shakespeare Company The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and opens around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratf ...

. Haynes composed full scores for plays by politically inspired writers such as

John Arden John Arden (26 October 1930 – 28 March 2012) was an English playwright who at his death was lauded as "one of the most significant British playwrights of the late 1950s and early 60s". Career Born in Barnsley, son of the manager of a glass ...

, Christopher Bond and

Adrian Mitchell Adrian Mitchell FRSL (24 October 1932 – 20 December 2008) was an English poet, novelist, and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's C ...

, combining music and theatre with tough material and a strong political message. He wrote music for productions of

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

plays at Newcastle Playhouse and Leicester Haymarket Theatre and was a founder member of the Belt & Braces theatre company. In 1981, Haynes wrote original music for ''Mourning Pictures'' at the

Tricycle theatre The Kiln Theatre (formerly the Tricycle Theatre) is a theatre located in Kilburn, in the London Borough of Brent, England. Since 1980, the theatre has presented a wide range of plays reflecting the cultural diversity of the area, as well as n ...

, a play by Honor Moore produced by Monstrous Regiment Theatre Company, which starred Gillian Hanna, Aviva Goldkorn and Josefina Cupido. ''The Observer'' called the music, "A haunting and leavening back-drop to the purposeful detailing of disease". The play was broadcast on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

in May 1982.

RedBrass

In Autumn 1975, Haynes founded the ten-piece British jazz rock band RedBrass, initially as an offshoot from the left-wing theatre ensemble Belt & Braces Roadshow. RedBrass was celebrated for the social and political content of Haynes's compositions and became one of the most ubiquitous groups on the jazz scene, earning praise from ''

Melody Maker ''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. In January 2001, it was merged into "long-standing rival" (and IPC Media sister publicatio ...

'' and ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

''. Musicians included trumpeter Dick Pearce, saxophonists Pete Hurt and Chris Biscoe, and singers Heather Jones and

Annie Lennox Ann Lennox (born 25 December 1954) is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving moderate success in the late 1970s as part of the new wave band the Tourists, she and fellow musician Dave Stewart w ...

. RedBrass released one album, ''Silence Is Consent'', on the Riverside Recordings label in 1976, and toured extensively until breaking up in 1979. The band's track 'Sunspots' was featured on the 2018 retrospective, ''A New Life Vol II: Independent and regional jazz in Great Britain 1968–1988.'' Haynes's imaginative vocal arrangements for three female singers were key to the group's distinctive sound, which incorporated Latin percussion, jazz-flavoured brass, a rock-rhythm section, unaccompanied harmony singing, and relatively unusual instruments including the glockenspiel, tubular bells, timbales and spoons.

Grand Union Orchestra

was born out of The Grand Union, a touring music theatre company founded in 1982 by Tony Haynes, John Cumming, Julie Eaglen, and David Bradford. From its inception, Grand Union Orchestra has always been a multicultural group featuring musicians from all over the world, many of whom are first-generation migrants living in London. Grand Union was founded to reflect the UK's changing cultural landscape, and to create a space for young musicians from diverse backgrounds to collaborate with top level jazz players. Grand Union performances and recordings feature a whole range of performers − black, white and Asian jazz musicians and singers, which represent people from all communities. As the company's artistic director, Haynes was known for harmoniously blending different genres and styles, and adapting the big band format for community education ventures, cultural exchanges, extended commissions, and collaborations. Haynes composed and arranged most of Grand Union's material and was widely celebrated for his ability to write and perform music that crossed ethnic boundaries, with particular focus on the journey linking traditional west African culture, Latin and jazz music. His musical ideas embraced classical learning, jazz and improvisation, and expertise in song-writing and lyric theatre; consistent themes in his compositions included exile, migration, the civil rights movement, the silk trade, and the slave trade. Haynes's 1989 composition, ''Freedom Calls'', was likened to a song-cycle by ''The Guardian''. Haynes described his work as "a sort of dialectical process involving historical ideas and contemporary ones; the

Battle of Cable Street The Battle of Cable Street was a series of clashes that took place at several locations in the East End of London, most notably Cable Street, on Sunday 4 October 1936. It was a clash between the Metropolitan Police, sent to protect a march ...

is an example, pregnant with modern resonances – the rise of fascism, anti-Jewish sentiments and anti-Muslim intolerance – whilst making sure that's not forgotten and dramatizing it all in a way that makes it contemporary." For many years, Haynes made music with the Bengali communities of

Tower Hamlets The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a borough in London, England. Situated on the north bank of the River Thames and immediately east of the City of London, the borough spans much of the traditional East End of London and includes much of ...

in east London, and with Bangladeshi musicians in

Dhaka Dhaka ( or ; , ), List of renamed places in Bangladesh, formerly known as Dacca, is the capital city, capital and list of cities and towns in Bangladesh, largest city of Bangladesh. It is one of the list of largest cities, largest and list o ...

. Haynes's compositions have been broadcast in full multiple times on

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

, including ''The Rhythm Of Tides'' (1997), ''Now Comes The Dragon's Hour'' (1999), ''Where The Rivers Meet'' (2000), ''If Paradise'' (2003), and ''The Golden Road, The Unforgiving Sea'' (2011). He was also featured on BBC Radio 3's Jazz File programme in 2007 as Grand Union celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Education work

Through Grand Union Orchestra's long-running workshop programmes, Haynes was heavily involved in music education. Grand Union have led workshops in schools, youth clubs and job centres since 1984. He is well known for organising large-scale projects involving young people and community groups. Haynes was a tireless supporter of community music, and used both Grand Union and RedBrass as the professional core of many bold initiatives involving youth bands, amateurs and folkloric groups of all kinds, for which he gained a reputation as an inspired enabler. He wrote a regular blog describing his approach to music-making and analysing his compositional techniques; he taught music degree students at

Trinity College London Trinity College London (TCL) is an examination board based in London, United Kingdom which offers graded and diploma qualifications across a range of disciplines in the performing arts and English language learning and teaching. Trinity Colleg ...

and made several programmes on jazz for the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

Campaigning work

In 1988, a report written by Tony Haynes, ''Music In Between'', was published by the

Gulbenkian Foundation The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (), commonly referred to simply as the Gulbenkian Foundation, is a Portuguese institution dedicated to the promotion of the arts, philanthropy, science, and education. One of the wealthiest charitable founda ...

. ''Music In Between'' is an investigation into the opportunities for training, rehearsal, performance and promotion available to creative performing musicians, focusing on popular and commercial musical forms: rock music, jazz, music for theatre, film and television, songwriting and folk music. Haynes argued that these fields are not sufficiently valued or supported by the bodies charged with promoting the arts and cultural life in the UK, such as the

Arts Council of Great Britain The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. It was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council (l ...

. One of the report's main findings was that funding bodies are attuned to providing finance for the creation of specific works, while the need for support in popular music is not at the point of creation, but for help in reaching audiences. Haynes long advocated for community-centred arts organisations, and criticised the then Arts Council chairman,

William Rees-Mogg William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg (14 July 192829 December 2012) was a British newspaper journalist who was Editor of ''The Times'' from 1967 to 1981. In the late 1970s, he served as High Sheriff of Somerset, and in the 1980s was Chairman of ...

, in a 1985 letter to ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

''. He argued specifically that government funding of the arts should not disadvantage small, artist-led organisations in favour of major national cultural institutions. He served on the National Executive Committee of the Musicians' Union from 1984 to 1988, and lobbied for the Union to provide its members with extensive professional services and practical support. Haynes was of the opinion that, in the fast-changing demographic of Britain today, migrant and migrant-descended musicians can and should have a profound artistic and educational influence on British culture, and called for greater recognition for the work created for local, diversely rich communities.

Death

Haynes died on 17 September 2024, at the age of 83.

Discography

* RedBrass – ''Silence Is Consent'' – Riverside Recordings, 1976 * RedBrass – ''RedBrass EP'' – RedGold Records, 1978 * The Grand Union – ''Jelly Roll Soul'' – RedGold Records, 1982 * Tony Haynes's Grand Union Orchestra – ''The Song Of Many Tongues'' – RedGold Records, 1986 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''Freedom Calls'' – RedGold Records, 1989 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''Songlines'' – RedGold Records, 1992 * Grand Union Band – ''Music From Around The World'' – RedGold Records, 1993 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''The Rhythm Of Tides'' – RedGold Records, 1997 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''Where The Rivers Meet'' – RedGold Records, 2000 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''Now Comes The Dragon's Hour'' – RedGold Records, 2002 * Grand Union Band – ''Around The World In 80 Minutes'' – RedGold Records, 2002 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''Bhangra, Babylon & The Blues'' – RedGold Records, 2005 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''12 For 12'' – RedGold Records, 2011 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''If Paradise'' – RedGold Records, 2011 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''Undream'd Shores'' – RedGold Records, 2015 * Grand Union Orchestra – ''Song Of Contagion'' – RedGold Records, 2017

References

External Links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Haynes, Tony 1941 births 2024 deaths 21st-century English male musicians 20th-century English pianists 21st-century English pianists 20th-century English male musicians Alumni of the University of Nottingham Alumni of the University of Oxford British male jazz composers British male jazz pianists English jazz composers English male composers English jazz pianists English male pianists Musicians from Surrey Entertainers from Epsom British jazz bandleaders British big band bandleaders Progressive big band bandleaders