John Arthur Lanchbery OBE (15 May 1923 – 27 February 2003) was an English-Australian composer and conductor, famous for his ballet arrangements. He served as the Principal Conductor of the Royal Ballet from 1959 to 1972, Principal Conductor of the Australian Ballet from 1972 to 1977, and Musical Director of the American Ballet Theatre from 1978 to 1980. He continued to conduct regularly for the Royal Ballet until 2001. Lanchbery was widely considered (including by Nureyev) to be the greatest ballet conductor of his time, and to be ‘a conductor and music director of unmatched experience’ who was ‘directly responsible for raising the status and the standards of musical performance'. Maina Gielgud, Artistic Director of Australian Ballet, stated that "He [Lanchbery] is not only the finest conductor for dance of his generation and probably well beyond". One critic wrote that ‘the music was always on its best behaviour’ when Lanchbery was conducting. He was also famous for his re-adaptation of canonical works. Early life Lanchbery was born in London on 15 May 1923, where he began violin lessons and music composition when he was eight years of age. He was educated at Alleyn's School, where he formed a collaborative partnership with Peter Stanley Lyons who was later a famous chorister, and with Kenneth Spring who was the founder of the National Youth Theatre and whose composer mother encouraged Lanchbery's musical talent. Lanchbery was in 1942 awarded the Henry Smart Composition Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied under Sir Henry Wood until his studies were interrupted by the war, during which he served in the Royal Armoured Corps, after which Lanchbery returned to the RAM to study for two more years before he returned to Alleyn's School as a music master. He was declined the job of Alleyn's School's Director of Music, and subsequently worked for a music publisher. Musical career Conductor of London Metropolitan Ballet and Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet: 1948 – 1959 Lanchbery was recommended to apply for the post of Conductor of the Metropolitan Ballet. He obtained the position and made his debut with them at Edinburgh in 1948. Two years later the orchestra collapsed for lack of funds. However, working with choreographer Celia Franca, Lanchbery wrote The Eve of St Agnes (the story was based on John Keats' poem of the same name), one of the first commissioned ballets to be shown on