Botsford, Ward 1927-2004
BOTSFORD, Ward 1927-2004
OBITUARY NOTICE—
See index for CA sketch: Born June 22, 1927, in Titusville, PA; died of leukemia, April 1, 2004, in New York, NY. Record producer and author. Botsford was a Grammy Award-winning producer of classical and spoken recordings. After attending Juilliard School in 1947 and 1948, he left school to work in the recording industry, becoming vice president of Vox Productions from 1951 to 1965. Interested in neglected classical music and recordings of historical interest, Botsford was noted for producing records of forgotten pieces by such composers as Antonin Dvorák, spoken recordings of T. S. Eliot and John Gielgud, and sound recordings of early NASA jets and spacecraft. He founded Arabesque, a part of Caedmon, in 1979, which, among other projects, produced works by little-known British composers. The author of books such as Sir Thomas Beecham: A Critical Discography (1964) and The Pirates of Penzance: The Story of the Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta (1981), Botsford won a Grammy in 1980 for producing Ages of Man, and again the next year for Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein. Continuing his efforts to champion classical music, in the 1990s he also ran the Web site Classicalmusicguide.com.
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Chicago Tribune, April 12, 2004, section 4, p. 9.
New York Times, April 10, 2004, p. A13.