Ken Howard
Producer/Director/Composer

He worked with Granada TV and the Drama Department of BBC TV. His early films included the BBC TV Man Alive from Belfast, The Kids Are United; Covent Garden for the ITV network and national cinema release; Enter The Adventure for ITV (a double winner of BISFA awards)

His BBC Everyman film, The Miracle Of Intervale Avenue, was shot in New York's South Bronx and nominated for the Grierson Award for Best Documentary. In 1988 it won the Best Documentary Award from the American Film Institute. His controversial drama study of John Lennon, A Journey In The Life, starring Bernard Hill for BBC TV was also networked on US television and selected for the 1989 Video Festival at Montpelier. His drama, A Penny For Your Dreams, the story of movie pioneer William Haggar was the first co-production between BBC/S4C and the independent sector, and carried off the Festival Award at the Celtic Film Festival . He also co-wrote the script and composed the musical score.

He produced and directed From The New World a study of conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami for LWT's South Bank Show and it was networked in the season of PBS's Great Performances in the USA.

The Russians Are Coming for Channel Four's Dispatches, highlighted the extraordinary exodus of Russian Jews to Israel, and Will Apples Grow On Mars? was an exclusive Viewpoint documentary for Central TV on the making of Biosphere II in Arizona. It has been called "the most exciting scientific experiment of our time".

His children's films for BBC TV, Braveheart and Today I am A Man, have won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Children's Programme in 1990 and 1991 and was followed by Listen To Me, a study of deaf children, You've Got A Friend with Alan Ayckbourn, that dealt with children's imaginary friends and won the Special Prize at the 6th Rencontres Européennes Télévision in Reims, France. He also wrote and directed the BBC drama, Open Mind with Anna Massey, about child psychotherapy.

A further South Bank Show, A Very Voluntary Trumpeter, was a portrait of the world's greatest trumpeter - the young Swede, Håkan Hardenberger - and was paired with a live concert performance at London's Royal Academy A Night At The Opera featuring Hardenberger and virtuoso trombonist Christian Lindberg.

For BBC's Bookmark he wrote, directed and composed the Christmas special drama Sunny Stories- an evocation of the life of Enid Blyton, starring Maureen Lipman and Anna Massey and The South Bank Show commissioned him to make the first profile of the legendary entertainer Danny Kaye. Nobody's Fool, produced in association with Kaye's daughter Dena and Samuel Goldwyn, incorporated unseen archive footage of the star as well as contributions from Dinah Shore, Virginia Mayo, Imogene Coca, Joel Grey, Larry Adler, Sir Peter Ustinov, Kitty Carlisle Hart and many others.

Mister Abbott's Broadway for BBC's Omnibus was an hour long tribute to the legendary 106 year-old Producer / Director /Writer/Actor. Presented by Mark Steyn it included musical contributions from Liza Minnelli, Comden and Green, Kander and Ebb, Jule Styne, Harold Prince, Natalia Makarova, Sheldon Harnick, Gwen Verdon and many others.

Living on One Buttock, a study of Boston-based conductor Benjamin Zander was transmitted on BBC TV's The Works and networked world-wide by NVC. His BBC TV film Children of the Mothership was a finalist in the Aspen Film Festival. Just 48 hours after the death of Frank Sinatra in May 1998, the ITV network transmitted his South Bank Show Special, Death of A Legend:A tribute to Frank Sinatra.

His eight-part rock history of London, Routes of Rock  was transmitted for Carlton ITV, and he devised and was Executive Producer for the six- part series for BBC Court In The Act. Both returned for second series.

His hour long special The Magic Mountain – documented the birth of The UBS Verbier Festival Youth Orchestra under James Levine and featured performance by Kennedy, Martha Argerich, Zubin Mehta, Gil Shaham, Yuri Temirkanov, Mischa Maisky, Vadim Repin, Paavo Jãrvi, Jonathan Miller among many others. Other recent productions include a profile of American singer Johnnie Ray for the South Bank Show and an hour long BBC documentary Resurrecting St Luke's on the transformation of Nickolas Hawksmoor's derelict London church into a new centre for the London Symphony Orchestra. He recently followed violin maestro Maxim Vengerov at 30 on his sabbatical year - a voyage of self-discovery that took him back to Siberia in midwinter, to Vienna, Paris, Moscow, and Istanbul and finally to dance tango on stage in Hanover as the culmination of Benjamin Yusupov's explosive new Viola Concerto. Living The Dream was transmitted as a South Bank Show and has already been broadcast in some dozen other countries. The companion piece, Maxim Vengerov Live in Moscow was filmed live at the Moscow Conservatory with pianist Ian Brown.

Ken Howard was Associate Producer for the CD-Rom of the international bestseller Sophie's World and creator of its highly successful boardgame. He is also amongst the most successful of British popular composers with many million-selling discs for artists from The Honeycombs, to Dave Dee and Elvis Presley, several West End musicals and award-winning film and television scores including Miss Marple, The Flame Trees of Thika and Shadowlands.