Neil Ardley was one of the most distinctive composers and arrangers on the British scene of the 1960s and '70s. His original sound embraced classical music's ambitious compositional outlook refracted through jazz, aspects of folk, sacred and film music, and prog rock. Ardley directed the New Jazz Orchestra on the 1969 classic Le Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe. His own catalog is defined by a quartet of '70s albums: Greek Variations and Other Aegean Exercises (1970), A Symphony of Amaranths (1972), Kaleidoscope of Rainbows (1976), and Harmony of the Spheres (1979). All showcased strikingly original charts and complex motifs performed by the U.K.'s best jazz talent. During the '80s he formed the electronic jazz group Zyklus, whose Virtual Realities appeared in 1991. During the '90s Ardley wrote choral music and toured with a re-formed Zyklus. He was also a prolific author who penned 101 popular books on music, science, and technology. Ardley was born in Wallington, Surrey, England, in 1937. He was educated at Wallington County Grammar School and Bristol University, where he took a degree in chemistry in 1959. He began to take a practical interest in music at age 13, when he started to learn piano, and later saxophone. He played both instruments in various jazz groups at university. After graduating, Ardley joined the John Williams Big Band as a pianist, and wrote his first compositions and arrangements for the ensemble. Following that, he formally studied arranging and composition with Raymond Premru and Bill Russo. By 1964, after the departure of its founders, Ardley became director of the New Jazz Orchestra after a suggestion by trumpeter Ian Carr. His audition was an arrangement of Duke Ellington's "In a Mellow Tone." (Jazz in Britain issued the track as a single by "Northern Dance Orchestra," directed by composer Bernard Herrmann!) Ardley ran the band from 1964-1971; his idea for the project was to assemble a cadre of fine players and improvisers from across the British scene who would also want to contribute original compositions to the performance repertoire. The revolving lineup featured of the cream of the British jazz crop including Harry Beckett, Jack Bruce (pre-Cream), Ian Carr, Mike Gibbs, Jon Hiseman, Barbara Thompson, and Norma Winstone, to name a few. In 1965, Ardley composed "Shades of Blue," the title track of the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet debut album. That year the New Jazz Orchestra issued its Decca offering, Western Reunion London 1965, recorded live in the label's studios. The group played gigs across the United Kingdom. In 1969, inspired by the arrangements of Gil Evans, New Jazz Orchestra issued one of the undisputed classics of British jazz: 1969's Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe. It offered intricate, almost impressionistic intricate arrangements of Miles Davis' "Nardis" and John Coltrane's "Naima," but the remainder of the album was composed by musicians associated with the orchestra: Ardley, Michael Garrick, Gibbs, Howard Riley, and Mike Taylor. Though it sold respectably at the time, its enduring tunes and charts have been voluminously written about by critics. (Its 2015 Dusk Fire reissue landed on the U.K.s Independent Albums chart.) When Ardley began recording under his own name on Vocalion/Decca for 1970's Greek Variations and Other Aegean Exercises (co-billed to Rendell & Carr, as they each contributed originals), his musicians were rotating members of New Jazz Orchestra and included Barbara Thompson, Chris Spedding, John Marshall, Karl Jenkins, and many more. Critics noted that Ardley's compositions "Omonoia" and "Meteora" reflected Evans' ethos, even as they pushed relational harmony into the future. That year Ardley arranged two albums by Colosseum (which contained members of NJO): The Grass Is Greener and Daughter of Time. The following year, Ardley edited the suite contained on Greek Variations and retitled it Mediterranean Intrigue, which comprised the first half of KPM 1084, a library music album b/w John Leach's Martenot. In 1972, he released his most ambitious work, A Symphony of Amaranths. Its lineup consisted of vocalists Ivor Cutler and Norma Winstone, with Karl Jenkins on Fender Rhodes, drummer Jon Hiseman, percussionist Frank Ricotti, trumpeters Derek Watkins, Harry Beckett, and Henry Lowther, reedists Dick Heckstall-Smith, Rendell, and Thompson, pianist Stan Tracey, harpist David Snell, bassists Chris Laurence and Jeff Clyne, with orchestral brass, strings, and mallet percussion. Ardley also contributed charts to Winstone's solo debut The Edge of Time that year. In 1973, Ardley contributed arrangements for Colosseum's Pop Chronic. In 1975, Ardley, Carr, Tracey, and Mike Gibbs (all NJO members) contributed compositions to the double-length Will Power: A Shakespeare Birthday Celebration in Music. Issued by Argo, it was arranged and conducted by Ardley with other personnel including Winstone, drummer Tony Levin, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, double bassist Ron Matthewson, and keyboardists Tracey, John Taylor, and Gordon Beck. Kaleidoscope of Rainbows was released by Gull in 1976. Recorded by Hiseman and produced by cellist Paul Buckmaster, the set showcased a small instrumental footprint with ambitious orchestral intentions. The underlying thematic material was developed from Ardley's use of Balinese gamelan scales (the Pelog comprising seven notes), and the Slendro, an older, more commonly used scale. The album was roundly praised for its tight charts, crystalline production, unusual compositions, and the power of its rotating improvisers. It placed at number 22 in New Musical Express' Top 24 albums of 1976. 1979's Harmony of the Spheres is generally -- and incorrectly --regarded as the end of Ardley's output as a recording artist. He was dropped by Decca almost immediately after the album's release, just as he was to commence recording an all-electronic album. In places, HotS sounds like Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre meeting the New Jazz Orchestra on a bandstand. Ardley's cast included guitarist John Martyn, vocalists Winstone and Pepi Lemer, Carr, saxophonists Thompson and Tony Coe, and pianist/synthesist Geoff Castle. Ardley directed and played an Arp Omni synth. That same year he contributed electronic keyboards to jazz-funk album Out of the Long Dark by Ian Carr's Nucleus. For years following his departure from Decca, Ardley almost exclusively focused his creative energy on writing and publishing. Fortunately, book design began to progress at a remarkable clip due to the advent of personal desktop computers. Ardley began writing principally for the innovative British publisher Dorling Kindersley in 1984. He wrote a series of DK books, including the award-winning bestseller The Way Things Work, written with American illustrator David Macaulay. It sold over three million copies. By the time Ardley retired as an author in 2000, he'd written 101 books that sold over ten million copies globally. In 1988, Ardley formally returned to music when he co-founded Zyklus with writer, critic, saxophonist, and keyboardist John L. Walters (Landscape); the band also included Carr and guitarist/electronicist Warren Greveson. They gigged in England and France in 1989, and issued Virtual Realities, their only long-player, in 1991 for AMP Records. Ardley had a lifelong fascination with choral music and in the later '90s, he began singing with local choirs. In 1996 he and Greveson were co-billed as creators with Patrick Huddie on the independently issued cassette Song of the Universe. They performed on electronics as Huddie read texts. In 2000, with Huddie reading liturgical texts, they composed and performed the music for Creation Mass. In 2002, Ardley and Greveson re-formed Zyklus and began writing and recording demos. Ardley died in 2004 at age 66. That year, Columbia released a remastered reissue of Greek Variations & Other Aegean Exercises. It has been licensed, remastered, and reissued by several labels since then. Since Ardley's death, there has been a number of reissues and discoveries. In 2005, Dusk Fire issued a 24/96 remastered version of A Kaleidoscope of Rainbows. His musical direction appeared on the 2007 memorial tribute set Remembering Mike Taylor on Trunk. The following year, Dusk Fire issued Camden '70 by Neil Ardley's New Jazz Orchestra, a cleaned-up tape from the group's performance at Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre, London, during the Camden Festival. Also in 2006, Jazz in Britain released Jazz Calendar: Olympic Studios '66 by Neil Ardley & The New Jazz Orchestra, from a recently discovered demo tape. In 2017 Neil Ardley & New Jazz Orchestra on the Radio: BBC Sessions appeared on the same label, as did 2021's Kaleidoscope of Rainbows: Queen Elizabeth Hall, 20th October 1975. Recorded roughly a year before the studio album, it offers extended versions of the compositions in the KoR suite live in a double-disc production. In 2023, Jazz in Britain published Neil Ardley: Kaleidoscopes and Rainbows, written by widow Vivien Ardley. In addition to the book, the deluxe package included a double disc of the composer's music. In June 2024, Britain's Beat Goes On label issued a beautifully remastered edition of A Symphony of Amaranths. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi