Alec Templeton (1909-1963) studied at London’s Royal Academy. In 1936 he moved from Wales to the United States, where he performed with many orchestras and began a successful radio career, appearing on The Rudy Vallee Show, The Chase and Sanborn Hour, the Kraft Music Hall and The Magic Key programmes. His own radio programme, Alec Templeton Time, was heard on the air in 1939-1941, 1943 and 1946-47. Blind from birth, Templeton was a serious musician who also was a marvellous satirist. His 1939 Carnegie Hall concert included works by Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Debussy and several of his own transcriptions and improvisations. Templeton’s creative improvisations became his calling card and he recorded and published a number of them. The 1954 recording of his Improvisation on Strauss’s “Tales from the Vienna Woods” shows his effortless technique and inventive musicality.
