Carl Davis

Carl Davis，美国的指挥家和作曲家。曾就读于戴维斯巴德学院，参加纽约市歌剧院比赛并获得大奖。开始活跃在英格兰。他是伦敦爱乐乐团的指挥。 作为一个电影作曲家，他一直是音乐厅和电影音乐领军人物。自70年代以来，他主要是做指挥家
卡尔·戴维斯(Carl Davis) 是二十世纪电影史上的活跃人物之一，大家可能还记得 1991 年 The Beatles 成员 Paul McCartney 曾经创作过一部《利物浦清唱剧》(Liverpool Oratorio)，合作者之一就是 Davis，不过不少评论家认为这部作品最终还是由 Davis 完成的。虽然出生在美国的布鲁克林，但是 Davis 在音乐方面的成就却是在英国取得的。
Carl Davis 1936年出生，大学毕业后曾任纽约市立交响乐团助理指挥。上世纪50年代与他人合作创作的音乐剧 Diversions 曾获 Village Voice 杂志 OBIE 奖，1961年携剧参加爱丁堡戏剧节时从此开始了在英国的音乐生涯，从此开始在英国发展。70年代中叶，Davis 为反映第二次世界大战的文献纪录片配乐，被邀请为BBC制作的二战系列纪录片 The World at War 配乐（这一系列后来成为历史及二战题材乃至整个纪录片题材中的经典），获得好评而声誉鹊起。1981年，因《法国中尉的女人》(The French Lieutenant's Woman) 获 BAFTA 最佳配乐。
在电影配乐方面的其他重要作品包括 Champions、Scandal 和 Topsy-Turvy，电视配乐方面除了1995版《傲慢与偏见》(Pride and Prejudice) 外，还为数十部 BBC 经典改编剧集和纪录片配乐。70年代为 BBC 介绍好莱坞默片时代的系列纪录配乐获得好评，此后为大量经典默片的还原进行配乐。1980 年为 Channel Four 还原的法国默片大师 Abel Gance 长达5小时的巨制《拿破仑》(Napoléon) 配乐，虽然英国对此片的还原受到法国方面的极力反对，1983年还原版在巴黎上映之后，法国文化部竟然授予 Carl Davis 艺术和文学骑士勋章。除了配乐工作之外，Davis 在创作、指挥和灌制唱片等多方面都有大量的作品和成就。2003年荣获 BAFTA 终身成就特别奖。并获得了CBE(Commander of the Order of the British Empire) 头衔。
Since moving to England in the 1960s, American-born conductor/composer Carl Davis has been a leading figure in both the concert hall and in film music, carving out a unique niche in each. Born in New York City, Davis attended Bard College and later studied composition with Paul Nordoff, Hugo Kauder, and Per Nørgård. He served as a conductor with the New York City Opera and the Robert Shaw Chorale, and earned an award for his 1959 off-Broadway revue Diversions (written in collaboration with Steven Vinaver). He became active in England at the outset of the 1960s with the Edinburgh Festival (where Diversions was performed in 1961), and this led to his being commissioned by producer Ned Sherrin to compose the score for the satiric television series That Was the Week That Was. The success of his work on at series led to further work on British television and, later, commissions from the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Davis first began gaining international recognition in 1973, when he was engaged to write the score for Thames Television's landmark 26-hour documentary series The World at War, which was an immediate hit in the United States and was widely shown for decades after — his grim, often irony-laced scoring was among the most haunting ever heard in a television series.
As a film composer, Carl Davis has worked on notable contemporary movies, most notably The French Lieutenant's Woman, which won him a British Academy Award and an Ivor Novello Award. His most unusual film work, however, has been in the authorship of new scores for such renowned silent films as the European restoration of Abel Gance's Napoleon , Ben-Hur: A Story of the Christ, Phantom of the Opera, and The Thief of Bagdad. Davis has scored more than fifty silent films, earning him the sobriquet "Mr. Silent Movie," and by 2005 Davis had scored all twelve of Charlie Chaplin's Mutual films, key early Chaplin shorts that Chaplin had not scored himself. Davis' score for Napoleon earned him the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture in 1983, and he had the privelege of returning to Napoleon when a new five-and-a-half hour long restoration was unveiled in 2005.
Since the 1970s, Carl Davis has been an active recording artist, principally as a conductor, most notably for EMI with a collection of film music by Sir William Walton and on the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's own imprint with a compilation of his own film music. In 1991, Davis assisted Paul McCartney in the composition of Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, and subsequntly Davis led the Royal Liverpool Philarmonic's Summer Pops Concert series from 1993 to 2001. Davis has also written concert works, including a symphony, a clarinet concerto; a fantasy for flute, strings, and harpsichord; and a programmatic work entitled A Circle of Stones. Ballet is a form in which Davis is particularly productive, and his ballets include A Christmas Carol, A Simple Man, Alice in Wonderland and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Davis' ballet of Cyrano de Bergerac is slated to appear in the Spring of 2007. Though American born, in 2006 Davis was awarded an honorary CBE from the British government for his contrbutions to music.