WELCOME TO THE NEW TIM DAVIES WEBSITE
[5/4/13]
Over the last few years I have been doing the occasional arrangement for Vince Mendoza and the Metropole Orchestra. Up to now it has only been for live concerts but this time I got to work on an album for Sabrina Starke. Album is out today. Here is a clip of one of my charts live.
[4/1/13]
After many months of work my orchestration blog “deBreved” is ready to launch. It is actually much more than a blog, more like a book, I guess I should call it a blook. Check it out, subscribe, like it, share it, comment on it and enjoy it. This whole site has also been redone is now Ipad friendly. There is a lot more music to listen to and the gallery is totally new.
I have been in the studio again with Chris Beck, this time it was sessions for The Hangover 3. The previous two films were just rock band and a small string group, this time we had a large orchestra and a rock band.
Sessions for the US big band will happen in mid May, can’t wait.
Big Band Gig
Monday April 29, 8pm @ Typhoon, $10, FREE parking.
Typhoon 3221 Donald Douglas Loop South (Santa Monica Airport)
310 390 6565
[3/18/13]
Have been in the studio a lot recently. The Internship and R.I.P.D. for Chris Beck and a session for Harold Kloser and Thomas Wander for White House Down. The Paperman, for which I conducted Beck’s score, won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.
[2/1/13]
I recently returned from Australia where I was recording my big band for my next album. I decided it would be cool to record half the album in Australia and half in Los Angeles. To tie it all together I have written a piece for double big band. A highlight of the trip was rehearsing the new piece with 2 big bands, only in Melbourne could I get a whole second band to show up for an hour just to run one piece. The sessions went really well. The sessions for the LA band are in May and the whole thing should be out in August.
[1/1/13]
Here we go with a new year. Last year was my best ever with lots of cool gigs and new people to work with. Jack Reacher, for which I was lead orchestrator for came out as did The Guilt Trip, which I conducted. Grammy nominations were announced recently and while I had no submissions of my own this year, I worked on 5 nominated projects.
Best rap album, Life is Good, Nas, Best Urban Contemporary Album, Kaleidoscope Dreams, Miguel. Producer of the year, Salaam Remi, all feature my string arrangements.
Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media- Muppets and Best Song Written For Visual Media, Man or Muppet- Brett McKenzie, conducted by me
[10/17/12]
At last I have started proper work on a new big band Album. I finished the last piece a week ago and we run it for this first time on Friday. At the moment I am madly practicing, I seem to the writing harder drum parts as I get older…… We will be playing most of the new albums music at our next gig.
I am also working on a Blog that will be about orchestration. The main focus will be on all the large and small things that are missing from most of the famous orchestration texts. Should be up in a month or so.
Big Band Gig
Monday November 19, 8pm @ Typhoon, $10, FREE parking.
Special guest Raya Yarbrough
Typhoon 3221 Donald Douglas Loop South (Santa Monica Airport)
310 390 6565
[7/26/12]
My May trip to Australia was a lot of fun. Playing with my old band is something I look forward to every year. While back home I also gave lectures at my old colleges- Queensland Conservatorium and Melbourne University, visited a few schools and gave some workshops.
Before I went I had the pleasure of conducting a track that Heitor Pereira produced for Melody Gardot. I had not heard of her before but she is a great singer with a very inspiring story, google it…..
As soon as I returned from Australia I had to hit the ground running. First up was some orchestrating and conducting for Chris Beck on The Watch, then I conducted Chris’s score for the The Guilt Trip.
I have done a few projects over the years for Producer Salaam Remi, arranging strings for albums for people like Cee Lo Green, Amy Winehouse and most recently Akon, but just for a change we did a film score. I arranged all Salaam’s music for Sparkle, the movie that Whitney Houston had just finished shooting before she died. I also did string arrangements for a couple of songs that Jordin Sparks sings that R Kelly produced. After that I was lead orchestrator for Joe Kraemer’s score for Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise. I am currently finishing up a Symphonic Sound Design project for new game that should be huge, details once it is completed. Probably forgot a few things, it has all been a blur….
Found some photos from a TV show a worked on a for Blake Neely, photos in the Gallery
[3/26/12]
AUSTRALIA TRIP 2012!
Heading to Brisbane and Melbourne in May. In Brisbane I will be doing some lectures at the Queensland Con. In Melbourne I will be giving some lectures at VCA and Melbourne Uni and taking some big bands. The trip ends with a performance at the Stonnington Jazz Festival on May 23rd. I have just finished a new piece and hope to have another done as well before the gig. It has been way too long since I had time to write for myself, the silly phone keeps ringing with other people asking me to write for them…….. I have been busy again working on games and films. A bunch of projects I worked on did well in the awards season. Batman:Arkham City and Infamous 2 both were nominated for G.A.N.G awards and Bret Mckenzie’s “Man or a Muppet”, which I conducted, one the Oscar for best song.
[10/28/11]
Several projects have just come out or are about to. Batman Arkham City is finally out. I orchestrated and conducted the score for composers Ron Fish and Nick Arundel. Footloose, I conducted for Deborah Lurie. 3 Musketeers, I orchestrated for Paul Haslinger. Tower Heist, I orchestrated for Christophe Beck. Muppets, I conducted for Beck. I also recently did some string arrangements for a huge project, details to come where it is released. Chris Beck was just featured in Variety as a Billion Dollar Composer. Was nice to see my name mentioned twice in the stories. Once in reference to recording of the Muppets score and the other for getting him involved in Education Through Music, a non-profit that I am on the board of.
[7/12/11]
AUSTRALIA TRIP 2011!
I will be in Brisbane and Melbourne in August. I will be the head Jazz Adjudicator for the Melbourne Schools Bands Festival this year. I will be doing big band a Show at BMW Edge in Federation Square on the 23rd. Tix are available here. Check the Facebook event for latest details.
The Reg Cole Quartet will be doing a reunion gig on the 14th at the Transit Lounge in Federation Square, check Facebook event for latest details.
Sony’s INFAMOUS 2 game is out. This was a huge project, lasting many months with lots of recording sessions. As well as orchestrating and conducting a few hours of music for Jim Dooley, Jonathan Mayer, Brain and Galactic, I wrote a lot of SSD and transitions that can be heard throughout the score. Here is a little video about the making of the score. You can hear some examples of the things I wrote on the SSD page of this site
[5/8/11]
Resistance 3 is all done and one more ep of the Event season to go. I recently conducted the scores for a few remakes, Footloose and Fright Night and next up is orchestrating Paul Haslinger’s score for a new 3 Musketeers film. In the meantime I am working on some arrangements for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. I am very excited to have a few big band gigs coming up, May 26th at the Big Band Olympics and June 6th at Typhoon.
Big Band shows!
Thursday May 26th, 2:30pm, LAX Marriot
Los Angeles Jazz Institute Big Band Olympics
Festival Info
Monday June 6, 8pm @ Typhoon, FREE entry, FREE parking.
Special guest Cameron Stone on Cello.
Typhoon 3221 Donald Douglas Loop South (Santa Monica Airport)
310 390 6565
News
[3/17/11]
I have just found out that the big band will be playing at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute Big Band Olympics at the LAX Marriott on May 26th at 2.30pm. The line up is looking really good and it is an honor to be playing with all the other great bands. Work wise the year has been very busy so far. I just finished conducting the score for the next Batman game for composers Ron Fish and Nick Arundel. I also orchestrated nearly 2 hours of music for it. I managed to jam it in around the Event and No ordinary Family. Next up is work on Resistance 3 for Boris Salchow.
Big Band show!
Monday November 29, 8pm @ Typhoon, FREE entry, FREE parking.
Special guest, singer and songwriter Raya Yarbrough.
Typhoon 3221 Donald Douglas Loop South (Santa Monica Airport)
310 390 6565
[9/20/10]
It is TV season right now and the great news is that several new shows are using live orchestras. I am orchestrating and conducting 2 of them that start showing this week. The Event is on Monday nights on NBC and features a score by Scott Starrett and No Ordinary Family is on ABC on Tuesday nights and has a score by Blake Neely.
My latest big band album “Dialmentia” has been getting a lot of play on Satellite radio. I also also recently found out that a couple of the tracks are currently featured on the Qantas inflight jazz radio channel. Whenever I fly Qantas I look to see who is on the jazz program, dreaming one day maybe I would be there, so finding out about this is was a quite nice treat.
[7/12/10]
Despicable Me, which I conducted the score for has just opened at number 1. I have never seen so many posters around LA for one movie, I guess they did something. I have just finished a few commissions and some more charts for the Metropole Orchestra. In the next few months I am working on 3 big games, none of which I can mention by name………
[4/21/10]
If anyone has been to a movie in the last 2 months, I bet I conducted at least one of the scores! Things have been really busy. Recent releases that I have conducted include Hot Tub Time Machine, Date Movie, Percy Jackson and Dear John. I just finished work on Despicable Me and the season finale to House.
In the game world, I recently orchestrated and conducted the score for a new Pirates of the Caribbean game for composer Ron Fish and Disney. I am about to start work on another Sony game, I will be doing some symphonic sound design first up then orchestrating and conducting Jim Dooley’s score. On the arranging front I just finished a project for Finnish singer Tarja Turunen and my first chart for the Metropole Orchestra in Holland for Jon Faddis and Steve Turre. I was not at the concert but it must have gone over OK as they just asked me to do some more, this time for Chaka Kahn.
The next month sees me doing a bit of travel-
May 5 – Sydney, Australia, World Premiere of my newest big band work – Conceivilization. The work was commissioned by the Sydney Conservatorium and is being performed as part of the ISCM World New Music Days
May 20 – Jazz Education Network Conference, St Louis, Opening night concert. I will be performing my Grammy nominated piece “Counting to Infinity” with the Army Blues Big Band.
May 21, 3pm. I will be presenting my lecture- Breaking the mold: Taking your big band writing to the next level
[1/21/10]
Happy New Year to everyone. December was pretty crazy with sessions for Percy Jackson, Wolfman and the A-Team trailer. I had a great time on Percy, Chris Beck asked me to arrange his themes for the end titles. I got to conducted it with a 98 piece band, all free time, no clicks or picture to worry about. I will post a link once the soundtrack is out.
I am proud to announce that I have been invited to present a lecture at the inaugural Jazz Education Network Conference in St Louis, MI, in May. This is the group that is replacing IAJE. The lecture is entitled Breaking the mold: Taking your big band writing to the next level. I will talk about some of the things that I do in my music to make it different and how they can be applied to other pieces. I am also working on getting some pieces performed and may sit in with a big band on the main concert, more details to come.
Right now I am working on the commission for the Sydney Conservatorium. It is going well, all sketched, now just fleshing it out. It is going to be the first movement of a new trilogy.
Big Band show!
Monday March 29, 8pm @ Typhoon, FREE entry, FREE parking.
Typhoon 3221 Donald Douglas Loop South (Santa Monica Airport)
310 390 6565
[12/05/09]
BREAKING NEWS! I have been nominated for a Grammy
- Best Instrumental Composition for Counting to Infinity. You can hear the track if you go to www.TimDaviesBigBand.com. It will play automatically. I am trying to celebrate when I can, but work is rather hectic right now. I am done with God of War 3. I recently conducted Christophe Beck’s score for Date Night, starring Tina Fey and Steve Carrel. Currently I am working on Percy Jackson and the Olympians, also for Beck and then after that it is onto the Wolfman with Paul Haslinger. I also recently did some work for AR Rahman for a presidential gala in Washington.
[10/05/09]
I have recently finished the first round of sessions for God of War 3 at Skywalker Ranch. It was a hectic week, having been in London for a wedding, I arrived in San Francisco Sunday night and then conducted a triple session on Monday. That did nothing for the cold that was coming on. I ended up having to get a lift back to LA as my head was too stuffed up to fly. I think I can now say what one of the movies I am working on with Salaam Remi is. It does not seem to be a big secret, I read about the ‘secret’ artist we are working with in an Australian newspaper! It is Sex and the City 2. Will wait a little longer to say what charts I did as the titles have not been leaked yet. I also had some cool conducting gigs recently: Sims 3 (Expansion Pack) for Steve Jablosnky, Couples Retreat for AR Rahman and Dear John for Deborah Lurie. Sony brought me in to help composer Normand Corbeil with some last minute orchestrations on a new game called Heavy Rain. Next up I have a few movies to conduct for Chris Beck and some more God of War sessions.
Big Band show!
Monday November 23, 8pm @ Typhoon, FREE entry, FREE parking.
Typhoon 3221 Donald Douglas Loop South (Santa Monica Airport)
310 390 6565
Our guest for the night will be Jim Bianco
[8/17/09]
A lot of people said they needed me in August, I did not believe them, turns out they really did need me. As well as ongoing work on God of War 3 for Sony, I am working on Ratchet and Clank for Boris Salchow and several arrangements for producer Salaam Remi to be featured in some big movies, can’t mention titles yet, throw in a conducting gig or 2 and I guess I am busy. The AFM has featured me in another article, this one is about the score for the GI Joe video game. You can find it here.
[7/15/09]
The International Musician, the magazine of the American Federation of Musicians, has recently published a story about me. You can find it here.
[6/14/09]
I am pleased to announce that I have just been commissioned by the Sydney Conservatorium of Music to write a big band work. The piece will be premiered next year at the ISCM World Music days which are being held in Australia for the first time. I used to submit pieces every year and never once would they play one and now they are going to pay me to write a new piece, I guess some things just take time.
I recently completed work on the game Lost Planet 2 for Jamie Christopherson. We had a 95 piece orchestra at Fox and made some serious noise. Next up is God of War 3. For those who do not know of it, google it, it is a huge Sony game and the score for GOW2, which I also orchestrated and conducted, won lots of awards. I also noticed that Prototype, Infamous and the Sims 3 are call now out. I orchestrated and conducted Prototype, did SSD for Infamous and conducted The Sims 3. I have a few more library tracks that have just come out with X-ray Dog. You can hear some of them on the music page.
DIALMENTIA is out! Get it at Origin Records or on itunes
The new www.TimDaviesBigBand.com is up and ready to go! It is now the place to go for band info. There are tracks from all our recordings and scores to check out. Many thanks go to Paulina [Puniaf.com] and Ted for putting the site together for me, also thanks to Paulina for the great photos.
News Archive
[5/1/09]
I survived my trip to Australia, the bands were all great and we had a huge crowd at the Melbourne release party. Now I am getting ready for the Bakersfield Jazz Festival and our launch party at Typhoon and catching up on all the work I was supposed to do while I was partying in Oz! Hard at work on Lost Planet 2 right now and then once that is done I am onto God of War 3 for a few months. While in Oz I also managed to squeeze in some choir charts for Cris Velasco and Mike Reagan for a game called Darksiders and another transcription for the new Fox show Glee.
[4/25/09]
I am about to jump on the plane back to Australia! It is going to be a full on trip. The gigs are listed below but I am also doing lectures and taking bands at QLD con, VCA, AFTRAS, Sydney and Melbourne Army and Sydney Con. I am also working with several school bands in Melbourne who will then open the show for us. Blackburn will premiere a new piece “Sarahbande”. As soon as I get back it is right back to work orchestrating the Lost Planet 2 game and then a big game for Sony to orchestrate and conduct. More details at a later date on that one.
[3/24/09]
March already. Was thinking it may have been a slow year but not so far. I just did some arrangements for Cee-lo Green and producer Salaam Remi. I thought Cee-lo sounded a bit like the guy from Gnarls Barkley, I forgot where I was for a minute, turns out he is the guy from Gnarls Barkley! I had some fun conducting an 87 piece orchestra last week at Fox for Stephen Trask’s score to Cirque du Freak for Universal. I also did some orchestrations for Alex Heffes and Mark Kilian on State of Play and Marco Beltrami on Repo Mambo. I just finished a commission for the Loma Linda Academy and am currently working on one for Blackburn High in Melbourne.
[12/15/08]
It is almost the end of the year and I still have not finished the record, that is pretty bad. I have a good reason though, people keep paying me lots of money to do other things! As usual it has been an eclectic mix of projects. Pushing Daisies is in it’s 2nd season. As well as orchestrating and conducting you can sometimes hear some jazz on the show and I either wrote it or arranged it. I also had some fun doing some barbershop music for a recent ep. I recently did another bunch of charts for producer Salaam Remi, that is always fun, he sends me a bed and I go to town with an orchestra over the top of it. I did a package of Symphonic Sound Design for the Sony game InFamous and conducted some strings for David Archuleta’s new record. My tracks for Extreme Music and X-Ray Dog (track here) are out and last week I orchestrated and conducted the score to the new Monsters Versus Aliens game. But coolest of all was that I got a call to help out with the orchestrations for David Hirschfelder’s score for Baz Luhrman’s new film Australia, being from Australia, I just had to work on it!
