John Lanchbery
Creative
Born in London, John Lanchbery studied at the Royal Academy of Music. From 1947-1949 he was musical director of the Metropolitan Ballet and created his first ballet
orchestration for choreographer John Taras for his work Design with Strings. While with the Metropolitan Ballet he also wrote his first ballet scores - Trio detruit and Pleasuredrome. After the Metropolitan Ballet was disbanded Lanchbery worked on film scores and joined the music staff of Sadler’s Wells. While at Sadler’s Wells he worked with choreographer Kenneth MacMillan on Somnambulism, The House of Birds and Mayerling. In 1960 he joined The Royal Ballet as chief conductor and while with The Royal Ballet he arranged many ballet scores, notably that for Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée and, later, that for Ashton’s film ballet The Tales of
Beatrix Potter.
In 1972 Lanchbery became resident musical director of the Australian Ballet and was briefly musical director of American Ballet Theatre before pursuing a freelance career
in the 1980s, continuing to work with Australian Ballet over the course of his career. Lanchbery was awarded honours in Russia and Sweden, and the Order of the British
Empire in 1991. He became an Australian citizen in 2002. He was posthumously inducted into Australian Dance Awards Hall of Fame in 2005.
