Timothy Brock’s
association with silent film began in 1985 when he was commissioned to write a
score to accompany the Georg Wilhelm Pabst film, Pandora’s box. Subsequently he has written or restored original
orchestral scores to nearly 20 silent films, including Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr. and the Bbc Television documentary The tramp and the
dictator. On a commission from the New Zealand Film Festival
and Music Publishers Boosey and Hawkes, he restored the 1929 manuscript score
to Dmitri Shostakovich’s only silent film work New Babylon.
In January of
1999, he was asked by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, in cooperation with
the Association Chaplin in Paris,
to restore and reconstruct for live performance Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 score to
Modern times. For the past three
years M° Brock has been serving as music director/conductor in over 100
performances for the Charles Chaplin family, and has since then been engaged by
the Chaplins to restore their father’s scores to The circus (1928), A dog’s
life (1918), Shoulder arms
(1918), The pilgrim (1923) as well as
a symphonic concert suite of Modern times
(1936). Currently he is undertaking the complete restoration of Charles
Chaplin’s score to his most famous film masterpiece
City lights (1931) and Chaplin’s only
dramatic film A woman of Paris (1923).
Among M° Brock’s
conducting engagements, most notably the Bbc Concert Orchestra at Royal Festival
Hall, Radio-Philharmonie Hannover des Ndr, Orchestra Regionale della Toscana,
the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Yamagata
Symphony Orchestra, Japan, and the Athens State Symphony Orchestra in Greece.
Recently he has conducted the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Sweden’s Malmö Opera
Orchestra and the Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur, Opera National de
Bordeaux, Orquestra simfónica de Barcelona, Düsseldorfer
Symphonie-Orchester,and the Accademia St. Cecilia in Rome. Future engagements
include performances in Italy,
Switzerland, Germany, France,
Holland, Czech
Republic, New Zealand
and the United States.
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