The centenary of Godfrey Ridout’s birth in 2018 provided the opportunity to rediscover Ridout’s music and original concert recordings by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  Over the course of his career, Ridout was fortunate to have many world premieres, commissions, and other performances of his works broadcast and recorded by the CBC.  He considered Canada’s national broadcaster have made “the greatest single contribution to Canadian music.”  Godfrey Ridout: The Concert Recordings presents four works recorded in concert by the CBC and includes two works that Ridout wanted to be remembered for, The Ascension (Cantiones Mysticae No. 2) and Two Etudes for Strings.

Godfrey Ridout was born in Toronto in 1918.  He discovered his interest in music at school, deciding to become a composer over the objections of his father. Unlike aspiring Canadian composers of the time, who typically studied in either England, France or the United States, he received his professional education entirely in Toronto, where his primary teachers and mentors were Ettore Mazzoleni and Healey Willan. He taught at Toronto Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto, composed film scores for the National Film Board of Canada, and arranged popular tunes for CBC radio orchestras. Godfrey Ridout died in 1984.