Brian Easdale

Easdale studied conducting at the Royal College of Music with Sir Malcom Sargent. There he met Benjamin Britten who introduced him to the film world. Brian Easdale became the first British composer to receive and Oscar for film music(for “The Red Shoes”). He kept the statuette on his mantle shelf. Whilst in India, he met and befriended Rumer Godden (which eventually led to him scoring “Black Narcissus” for Powell and Pressburger). He had a 20 year battle with alcoholism which he eventually managed to conquer. His personal motto was: “I shall never give in!” At the end of his life, he was planning some kind of multi-media work based on de Quincey’s “Confessions of an English Opium Eater”. In 1994, he presented a screening of “The Red Shoes” at the National Film Theatre and Michael Kamen arranged for him to present an award for best film music at the Ivor Novello Awards that year. He died, following a short illness, in 1995. —IMDb