Sidney Jones (composer)
Jones's most famous musical was The Geisha, but several of his pieces were among the most popular shows of the era, enjoying long runs, international tours and revivals.
In 1893, one of his songs, "Linger Longer, Loo", composed for the 1892 burlesque Don Juan at the Gaiety Theatre, became popular throughout the English-speaking world.
After this, Jones had less frequent and intense successes, but his more popular shows included My Lady Molly (1902), See See (1906), King of Cadonia (1908), The Girl from Utah (1913) and The Happy Day (1916).
His youngest brother, Guy Sidney Jones (1875–1959), also became a conductor and composer whose musical scores included The Gay Gordons (1907).
[4] After that, George Edwardes hired him as musical director for the Gaiety Theatre's 1891 tour of America and Australia, conducting the burlesques Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué and Cinder-Ellen Up-too-Late.
When Edwardes's touring company produced Cinder Ellen in Australia, Jones wrote a dance number that was added to Meyer Lutz's score.
After A Gaiety Girl, Jones again collaborated with Hall and lyricist Harry Greenbank to produce another success, An Artist's Model (1894), which ran for fifteen months.
Their librettos sported a solid and serious romantic backbone (confided to the baritone hero Hayden Coffin and the soprano Marie Tempest) alongside their comic and soubrette elements, and the scores which Jones provided included, alongside the lighter material, numbers sentimental and dramatic, as well as some impressive and vocally demanding concerted ensembles and finales.
The Geisha and San Toy took advantage of the fad for oriental settings in musical theatre that had reached a peak in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado in 1885.
[5][6] The piece figures prominently in Anton Chekhov's popular short story, The Lady with the Dog, and it was adapted as a Russian film in 1959 that featured its music, including "The Amorous Goldfish".
However, Jones, like his sometime collaborator Lionel Monckton, fell victim to changing musical fashions around the time of World War I, such as syncopated dance rhythms like ragtime, and retired from composition.
