Music Ardley moved to London and studied arranging and composing with
Ray Premru and
Bill Russo from 1960 to 1961. He joined the
John Williams Big Band as pianist, writing both arrangements and new compositions, and from 1964 to 1970 was the director of the newly formed
New Jazz Orchestra, which employed some of the best young musicians in London, including
Ian Carr,
Jon Hiseman,
Barbara Thompson,
Dave Gelly,
Mike Gibbs,
Don Rendell, and
Trevor Tomkins. In the late 1960s, encouraged by record producer and impresario
Denis Preston, Ardley began composing in earnest, combining classical and jazz methods. The New Jazz Orchestra album ''Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe
(1969), taking some inspiration from the orchestral jazz of Gil Evans, is now considered a classic of British jazz. While it includes intricate arrangements of Nardis by Miles Davis and Naima'' by
John Coltrane, the rest of the pieces on the album tend to look beyond the dominant African-American influences and were composed by young writers associated with the orchestra - including Ardley himself on the extended title track,
Michael Garrick, Mike Gibbs,
Howard Riley and
Mike Taylor. Although not issued under the New Jazz Orchestra name, Ardley's subsequent releases
Greek Variations and Other Aegean Exercises (1970) and
Symphony of Amaranths (1972) continued the orchestra and its aesthetic in all but name, and were critically acclaimed. reached number 22 in the
New Musical Express top 24 albums of 1976. Duncan Heining judges it to be "his masterpiece". However, as he began work on an all-electronic album in 1980, Ardley's recording contract was suddenly terminated, and he fell back on his writing and publishing career. He continued to play and compose, especially with Zyklus, the electronic jazz group he formed with composer (and former student)
John L. Walters, Derbyshire musician Warren Greveson and
Ian Carr. Singing in local choirs in the later 1990s led Ardley to start composing
choral music, and this occupied most of his musical attention until his death. Just as his composing and performance had been moved forward by the introduction and development of technology, so too with his publishing career, as computers began to become more and more important. In 1984 Ardley began to write mainly for
Dorling Kindersley, producing a series of books which included the best-selling (more than three million copies worldwide) and award-winning
The Way Things Work (1988), illustrated by
David Macaulay, as well as the Eyewitness volume
Music, first published in 1989. When he retired in 2000, Ardley had written 101 books, with total sales of about ten million. ==Personal life==