Europe

LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Click to enlargeMoving to Europe in 1972 with his English wife, Ann Rachlin, creator of Fun with Music®™, Ezra fulfilled many engagements conducting concerts and opera in Italy, Portugal and Spain, and returning to Australia for extensive concert tours. In the United Kingdom, he conducted the Halle Orchestra, the Philharmonia and the London Symphony Orchestra.  His recording of ALLTIME CLASSICS with the LSO gained him a Golden Disc. In 1986 he conducted a series of children’s concerts entitled FUNTASIA at the Barbican Hall, London with Ann Rachlin as narrator.

He frequently visited Italy where he conducted both symphony concerts and operas in Bologna, Turin, Florence, Naples and Rome.  Several visits to Portugal included performances in Lisbon and Madeira.

CHILDREN’S CONCERTS

Ezra loved children and always had an instant rapport with young people.  In Texas his series of children’s concerts were legendary and it was their love of children and music that brought him and his second wife, Ann together.   Nothing gave them greater pleasure than to perform for audiences of children in Australia, England and the USA.   In 1986 they gave a series of concerts in London entitled “Funtasia” with The London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Concert Hall in London. Ezra’s last performance there was in 1987 when he conducted the LSO with HRH The Prince Edward as soloist narrating “Peter and the Wolf”.  This concert was in aid of The Beethoven Fund for Deaf Children, the charity founded by his wife Ann, of which Ezra was Vice Chairman.

Ezra Rachlin was also a composer with an extensive repertoire of published works including “Pablo and the Magic Lasso”,  a delightful piece for narrator and orchestra for performance at children’s concerts.   It was also the theme for The Orchestra Colouring Book, used by Ann Rachlin for her youngest pupils aged 3-5  in her Fun with Music® sessions.

Ezra always loved writing stories for children. In the 1980s, he wrote a series of delightful stories featuring Heckerty the only Musical Witch in the World, originally created by Ann in her Fun with Music® classes. Ezra’s stories were personalised to the children and sent monthly by mail. Today they have been animated and feature in the new Heckerty for Apps and Book series, designed as a teaching aid to reading and spelling and available from Amazon and iTunes.

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