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First name: Victor
Last name: Davies
Dates: 1939
Category: Quartet
Nationality: canadian
Opus name: For Jennifer: remembrances
Publisher: CMC
Peculiarities: See: http://www.musiccentre.ca/apps/index.cfm?fuseaction=score.FA_dsp_details&bibliographyid=21220&dsp_page=3
Information: Victor Davies is a musician who has crossed many musical boundaries from ragtime pianist to composer whose music has been recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. Born in Winnipeg Canada he studied at the University of Manitoba and Indiana University graduating with a Bachelor of Music in Composition. He later studied conducting with Pierre Boulez in Switzerland. He began his career as a freelance composer, pianist and conductor, working with Winnipeg's major artistic organisations. He has composed and performed with his own "3rd stream" Jazz ensemble and was commissioned to write the first major score for planetarium, He has written music and lyrics for over 500 songs for the CTV children's series Let's Go! and The Rockets. Other theatre works include Beowulf staged in New York in 1977; Seize the Fire, based on William Blake; the musical Especially Babe for the Toronto Theatre Festival; The Musical Circus performed at the Zagreb Biennial; The Big Top commissioned by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Victor Davies has conducted the Winnipeg, Edmonton and Kitchener - Waterloo symphonies and has been the conductor of his own film and television scores. He has served as president of the Canadian League of Composers, on the board of the Canadian Music Centre, was the first coordinator of symphonic arrangements for the Imperial Oil McPeak Pops Library, and is currently a Vice Chairman of SOCAN. Davies' music, aimed at a wide audience, is melodic and brilliantly orchestrated and has a sense of drama and theatre. Though he looks to popular music as a source of inspiration, his style is eclectic. He uses popular idioms in his Pulsations Concerto for Electric Violin, the string quartet Fun for Four, the first movement of Celebrations for orchestra, Let's Talk! commissioned for the Emmy award winning Boss Brass and the CJRT Orchestra, and in his Jazz Concerto For Organ and Orchestra. This eclectic style also includes the use of the 12 Tone Technique and polytonality combined with traditional harmonic structures in the last movement of Celebrations, his film scores for The Pit, One Of Our Own, and his ballet Anerca. Davies‚ works runs the gamut of forms from childrens songs to his major oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra - Revelation. Equally at home in the concert hall, theatre or recording studio, his music is heard around the world, live, via recordings, film and television, (winning a Gemini Award for best documentary score in 2002) and he is sought after by performing artists to create new works for them. Works in progress include a Jazz Piano Concerto for conductor Bramwell Tovey to play and conduct. He has recently finished a musical of A Tale of Two Cities. 2002 Victor Davies Homepage