Tony Radford was born in Harrow and attended Harrow Weald Grammar School where some of his earliest compositions received performances, winning the Mayor of Harrow’s prize for composition, the winning piece being performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra schools' concert in 1964.

He studied composition with Dr Douglas Mews at what is now the Colchester Institute, a number of his compositions being performed in the Colchester/Ipswich area in the later 1960s.  In 1966 he won a Society for New Music competition, the winning Sonata for Clarinet & Piano being performed at Bethnal Green library.  At Colchester he also studied the clarinet and took up the saxophone, which is now his principal instrument and on which he is a frequent performer in East Anglian based jazz-bands and a rock band consisting entirely of past and present school teachers.

In 1969 he was commissioned by the East Anglian Daily Times to compose a String Quartet which was successfully performed by the Fidelio Quartet sandwiched between the then extant Benjamin Britten String Quartets in a London recital celebrating older and new East Anglian chamber works.  In the early 1970s he was a member of the East Anglian New Music group under whose auspices a number of his works were successfully performed.  He received good reviews for a number of London and East Anglian performances of his compositions with two of these being published in the 1970s.

During a long career in Secondary School music teaching he has devoted much time to arranging and composing for student ensembles in a variety of styles.  These include works for flute, clarinet and saxophone ensembles (published by Deben Music) plus pieces for mixed school ensembles, wind-band and jazz pieces for various sizes.  He ha also written incidental music for three Shakespeare plays, as well as co-writing three musicals for school performance.