He was dedicated to the conservation, recording and promotion of classic film scores by composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Miklós Rózsa, Elmer Bernstein and others.
He wrote full biographies as well as sleeve notes, radio scripts, reviews and articles on composers such as Benjamin Britten, Frederick Delius, Karol Szymanowski, Arthur Bliss, George Dyson, Herbert Howells, Maurice Ravel, Nikolai Tcherepnin and others.
Artists who have performed his work include José Carreras, James Galway, Julian Lloyd Webber,[1] and Jill Gomez.
[5] Miklós Rózsa was impressed by Palmer's critiques of his work and invited him to assist with the orchestration of his score for Providence (1977) and all his subsequent films.
This led to further orchestration work with film composers such as Maurice Jarre (A Passage to India (1984), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), and Stanley Myers (The Witches (1990).
He worked as an orchestrator or arranger on such films as Obsession (1976), Zulu Dawn (1979), A Passage to India (1984), Spies Like Us (1985), Legal Eagles (1986), Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989), Shirley Valentine (1989) and The Witches (1990).