If you attended the RCBB Heinz Hall concert on November 29, you already know the stage overflowed with 300 student choristers raising a joyful noise. Here’s a photograph taken from the hall - a beautiful sight!

One of the pieces on the holiday series is Gordon Langford’s “Christmas Fantasy”. It’s a safe bet that Gordon Langford (b.1930) has been represented by more arrangements and compositions on RCBB programs than anyone else in our 26-year history.

In addition to his hundreds of works for brass band, Gordon Langford is often employed by Hollywood as an orchestrator, having worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman II, First Great Train Robbery, Clash of the Titans and Return to Oz, among others.

While looking over his career, I found something interesting. Some of his compositions and arrangements were written as ‘Test Card’ music in the 1960s and 70s by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

A test card (we know it better in the USA as a test pattern) was a television signal broadcast at times when the transmitter was active but no program was being broadcast. Test cards were accompanied by music written especially for them to avoid having to pay licensing fees for existing compositions. Nowadays there is a cult following for test card music.