Baroque on a Roll: Classical Music in the Modern Era – Thursday 7th July 2022

Baroque on a Roll: Classical Music in the Modern Era by Tony Rawlins

When Tony first appeared at Grayshott in October 2019,  he gave a highly entertaining and well-received lecture on ‘Mad Men & Artists’ which looked  at how the advertising industry exploited Fine Art.

In this lecture, Tony will talk about how classical music has recently grown in popularity and how it has enhanced the drama/tension/romance/memorability of many feature films and TV commercials. We will also take a look at how the internet has enabled a composer to assemble and record a choir of over 8000 singers from 120 countries without any of them ever having to leave their homes. Tony will also explore how classical musics melodies and chords have been the inspiration for a huge number of popular songs and he will play the guitar and sing in order to illustrate this. 

Tony Rawlins

Tony was educated at Highgate School, starting his career in advertising in 1965 as a mail boy in J.Walter Thompson. He graduated through the training system there to become an account director and subsequently worked in a number of agencies before setting up on his own in 1985. There he handled primarily Guinness advertising in Africa and the Caribbean, where he produced many commercials and print ads for them over a period of 15 years. He remains active as a consultant in the industry, but now concentrates on more philanthropic projects – producing a film in the rural villages of Nigeria for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. More recently he has completed a sanitation project in Haiti after it was devastated by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.  

He has been a member of The Arts Society for many years. His earlier lecturing experience includes presenting to client groups, sales conferences and students of creative advertising in the UK and overseas. More recently he has been lecturing to Arts Societies in the UK and Europe.