Don Walker (orchestrator)

Walker was born in Lambertville, New Jersey. He attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Audrey, had a daughter, Anne Liebgold, and a son, David. Walker died in New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1989 at the age of 81.

Walker is credited with writing some arrangements for Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1975 musical By Jeeves. His orchestrations for Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella, which had never been filmed, were heard in the 1980 production of the play telecast on Great Performances. Walker also orchestrated the early television variety program The Admiral Broadway Revue.

Occasionally Walker wrote his own music and lyrics for Broadway. In 1945 he collaborated with Clay Warnick on Memphis Bound, a swing version of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, featuring legendary tap dancer Bill Robinson and an all-black cast. Courtin' Time was his 1951 musical with Jack Lawrence, notable for direction by the actor Alfred Drake. The only film score he composed was for the motion picture A Thousand Clowns, starring Jason Robards. Walker orchestrated and contributed original score elements to The Appointment (1969), starring Omar Sharif.

When older shows were revived, Walker was often chosen to re-orchestrate them in a more up-to-date style. He performed this task on the 1943 revival of A Connecticut Yankee, the 1952 revival of Pal Joey, and the Broadway revival that same year of Of Thee I Sing. During this process, he realized that original orchestrations were often neglected, and the lucrative secondary licensing business was poorly exploited. With this in mind, he set up Music Theatre International in partnership with Frank Loesser, which has managed the subsidiary rights of many shows since the mid-1950s.

As with many of the other great orchestrators, Walker served a long apprenticeship with Max Dreyfus at Chappell Music's arranging department starting in the 1930s, until he finally went out in business for himself in the early 1950s setting up office in New York City.

Don Walker (October 28, 1907 – September 12, 1989) was a prolific Broadway orchestrator, who also composed music for musicals and one film and worked as a conductor in television.