Walking in the Air

 

 

Aled Jones (born 29 December 1970) is a Welsh singer and television/radio personality and broadcaster who first came to fame as a boy soprano. He is the only child of Nest and Derek Jones, was raised in the small Welsh-speaking community of Llandegfan, in Anglesey and attended Ysgol David Hughes. He is now notable for presenting Songs of Praise on BBC 1,BBC
Radio 2's Good Morning Sunday and The Choir on BBC Radio 3.

Aled Jones biography
The former child star, best known for the Christmas hit Walking In The Air.


Aled Jones will, in the minds of many, be forever associated with Walking In The Air, the theme from Raymond Briggs' evergreen cartoon The Snowman. In the mid 1980s the boy treble with the unfortunate bowl haircut was seemingly unavoidable.

Aled was born on 29 December 1970 in Llandegfan, Anglesey. He joined the Bangor Cathedral Choir aged nine, and won many national singing competitions and Eisteddfodau.

He recorded two albums, one of which was heard by a BBC producer. Aled was invited to sing live with the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra on TV and radio. Three BBC television programmes followed, which were watched by over 18 million viewers.

Aled's first release was in July 1985, when the BBC issued his rendition of Memory, the theme from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical atrocity Cats. It wasn't a huge success, but the follow-up, Walking In The Air, was a top five smash.

The song became forever associated with Christmas, due to it being featured in the evergreen Raymond Briggs animation The Snowman. It made Aled a huge international star. He appeared on Top Of The Pops, and sang with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in front of 27,000 people. Less fortunate was the occasion when he forgot the words to Memory while singing for the Queen - an occasion which reportedly still causes nightmares.

While Aled wasn't able to repeat the success of Walking In The Air, he released a number of albums between 1985 and 87 - mostly containing hymns and traditional songs - which earned him numerous gold and platinum discs. He even became the first person ever to have two classical albums in the pop charts simultaneously.

And then he disappeared from the public eye. The problem was, as is so often the case, hormones. For unlike that other famous Welsh angel, Charlotte Church, Aled had to overcome the adolescent problem of the broken voice.

Fortunately, it meant he could duck out of the public eye for a few years, and not have to sing Pie Jesu any more. Opera star Stuart Burrows advised him to not sing for five years once his voice broke, but still Aled found it hard to stop.

Instead he became a county level tennis player, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music where he joined jazz-funk band A2Z. He went on to gain entry at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where he trained as an actor. It led to appearances in productions of Twelfth Night and Joseph And His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

When the acting roles began to dry up, he turned once again to singing. Aled was invited to sing on and present Songs Of Praise at Bangor Cathedral, where he'd once been a choirboy. He also presented shows on Radio 2, 3 and 4.

Since then he's presented his own chat show on Radio Wales and a talent show on S4C. And, to the delight of many, he's returned to recording music. In 2002 he signed a five album deal with Universal, and released a new album, the imaginatively-titled Aled.

Christmas 2002's screening of The Snowman was the first time the original singer of Walking In The Air - Peter Auty, a choirboy at St Paul's Cathedral - was credited. But one suspects it'll be a little while longer before Aled can shake off the association.

The Aled album was a huge success, and topped the classical album chart for three weeks. It was followed in September 2003 by Higher, and a tour of the UK.

The following year, his career came full circle with the release of The Christmas Album. Sadly, though, there was no room for a re-reading of Walking In The Air.


Aled Jones' album "You Raise Me Up, The Best Of Aled Jones" was released in November 2006, featuring a reprise of his song "Walking in the Air", which has now become a duet between young and present Aled. This clip was remixed the video in 1985 and the audio recorded in 2006