Graham de Wilde’s musical training started as a chorister at Dean Close School, Cheltenham. After leaving school he worked for J. Walter Thompson from 1970-74 as a TV and radio producer making commercials, and during this period started writing jingles and music for commercials. Such commercial classics as the original ‘Yorkie ‘ commercial and ‘Dulux Paints’ were among his early successes. He formed his own production company in 1975 and also managed Sound Developments recording studios London for two years from 1977-79. He produced radio commercials and audio cassette programmes in many different areas. During this period he also composed music for corporate use and business television use for companies such as IBM, Kodak. British Telecom and composed many of the early ‘Experience’ shows in Singapore, Oman, Edinburgh and Malta.
Graham arranged scores and albums for many bands and artistes including Salena Jones and Spike Milligan, and was the vocalist of the loudest rock band in the galaxy on the album version of ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’.
In 1980 he composed the track ‘Newsweek’, which became the title theme for Whicker’s World, and had a top twenty hit in 1981 with the’Wikka Rap’ by The Evasions – a comedy spoof that was a massive hit in the USA and became a cult classic. It was sampled and covered by Coolio in a new track called ‘Sumpin’ New ‘ which went to number one in the USA for 8 weeks in 1995-96. Snoop Doggy Dog and various other artists have also sampled various parts of this cult classic.
During the 1980’s he composed nineteen albums for KPM/EMI and this music ranging from the traditional – The Red White & Blue to the now legendary Classic Fusion and Atmospheric Journeys series. All these albums are still used extensively in television, commercials and corporate work across the world.
Television work includes the music from ‘The Medicine Men’ from Anglia TV, ‘Hope it Rains’, Thames TV, ‘The Ultimate Package’ a four part series for YTV, ‘Hollywood Women’ and ‘Hollywood Kids’ for September Films/Carlton TV, various Whicker’s World programmes, ‘The Orient Express’, ‘The Sultan of Brunei’ and ‘Pavarotti at Pangkor Laut’, ‘Going Ape’ for Anglia Survival and music for many other Survival programmes.
He has done many orchestral arrangements for various artists, producers and bands, and musical direction, supervision and accompaniment including film appearance as the bandleader in the film ‘White Mischief’.
Graham has also composed and arranged and produced the commercial albums Airborne (1996), Virtual Journeys (2000), and Passages in Time (2010).
He was an external lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music from January 2005-7 on courses dealing with Music to Picture and Music Business plus lectures on the history of film music. He also served two terms as the writer member of the PRS Appeals Panel.
In 2008 he was commissioned by Singscape to write a sacred choral work based on the Dream of the Rood, an Anglo Saxon poem preserved in the 10th Century Vercelli manuscript. The work uses voices in both traditional and atmospheric roles with both narration and the spoken word. The piece was given its première in Douai Abbey on the 22nd November 2008.
He has just completed a new album Passages in Time which is available as a hard copy CD on the website.