Musicians - Carl Davis

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	Musicians - Carl Davis

de:Carl Davis Carl Davis CBE (b 1936) is an American conductor and composer who has been living in the UK for the past two decades.

He was born in New York on October 28 1936. He has made England his home and married an English actress, Jean Boht. He is a conductor with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and regularly conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

He has written music for over 100 television programs but is best known for creating music to accompany films that were originally silent. He has assisted in the orchestration of the symphonic works of Paul McCartney.

The television years

He achieved early prominence with the title music for some of the acclaimed BBC anthology play sries, The Wednesday Play and later for Play for Today. Perhaps his greatest TV score was for the series The World at War (1974). Other programs that are well known include Up Pompeii (1971), The Naked Civil Servant (1975) (cf Quentin Crisp), Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) (cf Winston Churchill), the epic mini-series The Far Pavilions (based on the novel by M. M. Kaye) (1984) as well as the six-part mini Pride and Prejudice (1995).

Silent film music

In 1980 Davis was commissioned by documentarians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill to create music for Thames Television's Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film. His association with them continued the same year with Abel Gance's epic silent film Napoléon (originally 1927), which was restored and expanded with Davis' music for cinematic release. There was a similar treatment for D. W. Griffith's Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through The Ages (originally 1916). This had orchestral music originally, but Davis's new score was used instead in 1989.

The Hollywood documentary series was followed by the documentaries Unknown Chaplin in 1982, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act To Follow (cf Buster Keaton) in 1987 and Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius (cf Harold Lloyd) in 1989. In the 1980's and 1990's, Davis wrote and conducted the scores for numerous classic silent films released restored and released through Brownlow and Gill's "Thames Silents" series in the UK. By 1993, his reputation made him the number one choice for new scores to silent films. Many DVD releases of the silent version of Ben-Hur (1925), Safety Last (1923), Chaplin's City Lights (1931) (re-orchestrated by Davis based on Chaplin's original written score) and Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924), use Davis's music. In many of these recordings he is the conductor as well the composer. On several occasions he has performed these works live in the cinema, as the film is running.

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