Albert Sendrey

Prolific but often-uncredited film/TV composer, conductor, author, orchestrator and arranger, educated at the Leipzig Conservatory and the Trinity College of Music in London. He also studied with John Barbirolli, Albert Coates, Henry Geehl, and his father, Alfred Sendrey (the Hungarian-born opera singer and composer). Albert Sendrey grew up surrounded by music. His mother, Eugenie, had been a soprano for the Vienna Opera under Gustav Mahler. During his lengthy career, he contributed to over 170 films and television shows, signing with MGM in the 1940s and, from 1956 to 1964, working as pianist and conductor for Tony Martin's live performances, including those in Las Vegas, where in 1953 he began writing production numbers for the Riviera and Sands. (Tony Martin said of Albert "I liked his piano style ... because he felt for singers. He just seemed to have that inner sense of when to play an artistic run and when to just play soft and play low. He set tempos great.") He arranged the Broadway musicals "Peter Pan" (1954) and "New Faces of 1956" and wrote special material for night clubs.