Graham Hurman - Musical Director

Prior to Oliver! Graham Hurman was musical director for the London production of Les Misérables (Queen’s), conducting the record-breaking 9,000th performance.
Other theatre includes: Cats (Hamburg, assistant musical director), Starlight Express (Germany, musical director), Starlight Express (USA tour, music associate), Saturday Night Fever (USA tour and Las Vegas, music associate), Starlight Express (first national UK tour, musical director), Cats (25th anniversary UK tour, musical director) and Honor Blackman’s one-woman show Wayward Women (musical director and piano). Graham was music associate for the Starlight Express second national UK tour and the 2002 and 2008 reworking of the show in Germany. He also supplied musical arrangements for opera singer Marilyn Hill Smith’s compilation show Enchanted Evenings and Glamorous Nights (2007 UK tour). Graham was musical director and conductor for the 2002 German cast recording of Starlight Express and featured in the television series The Passions of Girls Aloud (ITV2) conducting Kimberly Walsh singing ‘On My Own’ from Les Misérables. Graham also conducted the 2009 live cast recording of Oliver!

"My aim is to ensure that the Lionel Bart’s music is recreated in the style that Lionel Bart intended, and the musicians playing his music, and the actors singing it, do so in the style, the feel, that he would have wanted. The music provides the emotional power of this show, and conveys the power of the book. On the one hand, people think of Oliver! as a happy family show but it is also a powerful story. Lionel’s work has to be done justice to, but we also recreate the power and imagination of Dickens’s original story.
With 21 musicians, we are one of the biggest shows in the West End, with far more musicians than usual. When we were putting the orchestra together, we didn’t say, ‘what can we manage with?’ we said, ‘how many do we need?’ Then used them. Drury Lane is a fabulous theatre and it really doesn’t get much better than being here, in this vast, beautiful and historic building, with a great orchestra and the space to use them all."