Biography
About > Biography
Larry Cansler is an Emmy award nominated composer, arranger, conductor, music director, and pianist.
A native Texan, Larry started his musical career majoring in music composition at North Texas State University. He moved to California after college and after serving in the United States Army.
Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, he hooked up with an old friend from Texas, Kenny Rogers. Rogers had just formed the rock group, The First Edition, and he asked Larry to come on board as keyboardist, musical director and arranger.
It was during this time that Larry joined the writing staff at Screen Gems and started writing with Michael Martin Murphey. They composed and produced an 18-song rock opera for The First Edition called The Ballad of Calico on Warner Bros. Records. It was also during this period that Cansler and Murphey penned the pop classic Wildfire. This song has sold over five million copies and still gets an average of 250,000 airplays per year in the US alone.
During the seventies he was one of the first composers and arrangers to develop the genre’ that became ‘fusion’ with his big band that merged rock rhythms with a jazz horn section. The band appeared at many night spots in Hollywood during this time and generated quite a lot of excitement and attention. Because of this he was soon arranging for some of the top recording artist in the business.
Cansler was also in demand as musical director for television variety shows. He was MD for “Rollin’” featuring the First Edition. The show was produced in Toronto for CBS and ran for two years. He also worked as musical director for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, also a CBS production. He scored dozens of episodic dramatic television shows including “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”, “Lady Blue”, “For Love And Honor”, among many others. He also scored the hit television movies “The Gambler, parts 1,2, &3″ and “Coward Of The County” starring Kenny Rogers. In addition, he scored “Songwriter” starring Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson produced by Sydney Pollock and the Academy Award nominated “A Short Film On Solar Energy” directed by Robert Redford.
A stint as musical director and arranger for The Jackson Five was a very rewarding and happy experience as well. He wrote and conducted their ground breaking Las Vegas show at the MGM Grand Hotel. He still regards that position as one of his favorites.
It was during this period that he started composing and producing the music for countless national commercials with Don Piestrup and later with John Bahler. Some of his original commercials are still being aired today.
Larry is an avid private pilot and served on the support team of Burt Rutan, Dick Rutan, and Jeana Yeager and the Voyager aircraft that circled the globe nonstop and unrefueled in nine days. He and Dick Rutan teamed up to produce an American airshow for the Malaysian government at Langkawi Island, Malaysia. The show featured some of the greatest American airshow pilots and skydivers as well as a MiG 29 demonstration team from the Russian Air Force.
These days Larry spends his time between Arizona and California with his wife of twenty years, Lynn, a registered nurse. He has two daughters from a previous marriage, Amanda and Erin. In the last few years he has attended art school and spends a lot of his time painting southwest landscapes. He also builds and flies radio control airplanes and helicopters when he has some spare time. And he continues writing and creating exciting new concepts in the music world.