Since the premiere of his Piano Concerto in G minor (1980) at the age of 17, Timothy Brock has been an active composer and conductor who has specialized in concert works of the early 20th-century and silent film.

Concert-hall

As a composer of concert-hall works, Brock wrote his first orchestral work for the University of Washington Chamber Orchestra (Nine-Ball Suite) in 1986 for whom he was serving as composer-in-residence.

At age 24, Brock composed the first of his three symphonies (No. 1 in G major) in commemoration of the Washington State Centennial in 1987. In 1989 he won the PUMA Composer prize for his Requiem for the Old St. Nicholas Church just before becoming principal conductor of the Olympia Chamber Orchestra at age 26, serving at that post for the next 11 years.

In 1995 he had been granted a composer fellowship from the Washington State Arts Commission, during which he composed his first opera Billy (1995, libretto by Bryan Willis), the Divertimento: Five Picture-Postcards for Orchestra, and his second opera, Mudhoney (1998, adaptation of the original screenplay by the composer and Bryan Willis).

By age 35 he had composed three symphonies, six string quartets, four concertos (Piano, Clarinet, Viola and Violoncello), a cantata, and numerous chamber and orchestral works. In his final year with the OCO he had been commissioned to write an orchestral song cycle for the noted soprano Cyndia Sieden (Orchestra of the 18th Century).

It was at his farewell concert, in June, 2000, that he and Ms. Sieden gave the premiere of The Funeral of Youth, four orchestral settings to four poems of the English poet Rupert Brook. Mr. Brock resigned from his post as conductor of the OCO in 2000 to work for the Charles Chaplin estate as restorer, and is continuing to the present day.

In the course of his career, he has conducted over 200 programs including 30 world premieres of new or lost works by a wide diversity of composers.

Mr. Brock’s continuing focus in the promotion of lost or re-discovered works began in 1991 with the first US-concert performance of Darius Milhaud’s 1927 score, Le Petite Lilly. In 1993 he premiered a rarely heard an original hand-written transcription (discovered in Philadelphia) of the 18th century French composer Etienne-Nicolas Mehul; his First Symphony.

Mr. Brock’s restoration of the 1929 Max Butting score Lichtspiel von Walter Ruttmann had it’s premiere in 1995, and in 1997 he gave the North American premiere to the previously lost 1930 Russian-vaudeville masterpiece Declared Dead, by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Working from the original manuscript, Brock had also restored Aaron Copland’s original version of Music for Radio, and gave both the second-only American performance (the first given by conductor Howard Barlow in 1937), and the European premiere on January 18th, 2003 with a live concert simulcast on DRS 2, in Zürich.

Other notable programs included the first US performance of the complete Pelleas and Melisande by Jean Sibelius and the world premiere of David Raksin’s Nocturne written in 1946. Overall he has given 8 world premieres of orchestral works written for the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, and was also the founder of the OCO’s annual Beethoven Birthday concerts, now in their 16th year.

Most notably however, it is his concert series of Entartete Musik programs, music of composers banned by the Third Reich, which receives the widest acclaim. The works of Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), Franz Schreker (1878-1934), Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942), Hans Krása (1899-1944), Gideon Klein (1919-1944) and Pavel Haas (1899-1944) features prominently in this series.

Mr. Brock gave the American premieres of Hanns Eisler’s Kleine Sinfonie, Niemandslied, Kuhle Wampe and Erwin Schulhoff’s Symphony no. 2, as well one of the first-ever performances of Viktor Ullmann’s poignant opera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis, written from within the Terezin ghetto in 1944. Brock had also included his own string orchestral transcriptions of the string quartets of Pavel Haas.

Since these series had been initiated 12 years ago, it has been Brock’s aim to include these works in their rightful places, among standard orchestral repertoire, and to expose audiences to the work of great composers whose work, and sometimes very life, had been cut short by the brutality of oppression.

Silent-film

Timothy Brock’s association with silent film began in 1986 when he was commissioned to write a score to accompany the G.W. Pabst film, Pandora’s Box, starring Louise Brooks. Subsequently he has written new or restored original orchestral scores to nearly 30 silent films.

Original scores for silent-film

After completing Pandora’s Box (1928/1986), he was subsequently commissioned to compose a score for the other Pabst/Brooks collaboration, Diary of a Lost Girl (1929/1987). He was then commissioned to compose a new score for Sunrise (1927/1989) by film-historian David Shepard and Twentieth-Century Fox, for their upcoming re-release of their famous film by master filmmaker F.W. Murnau.

Thus began a fruitful relationship with Shepard, who, over the next 6 years commissioned 7 full orchestral scores to G.W. Pabst’s The Love of Jeanne Ney (1929/1992), F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1926/1993), Walter Ruttman’s Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1929/1994), F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1924/1995), Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919/1996), Vladimr Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia (1928/1997) and Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1920/1997).

In 2001 he composed the score for Kevin Brownlow and Micheal Kloft's documentary The Tramp and The Dictator (2002). His collaboration with Photoplay Productions also includes in 2004 the recording session of the The Cat and the Canary score by friend and collegue Neil Brand whose other score Piccadilly he conducted at both New York Lincoln Center and The Barbican Centre in London.

Since the yera 2000, Brock has been commissioned to write several new scores for silent film. In 2003, the Berner Symphonie-orchester (Bern, Switzerland) commissioned Brock’s first of four Buster Keaton film scores, Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928/2003). Since then he has been commissioned to write a score to Keaton’s One Week, and in late December, 2005, he gave the premiere of his score to Keaton’s masterpiece The General (1926/2005) with the Orchestre National de Lyon. In 2006, the Cineteca di Bologna, in co-operation with the Orchestra Teatro Comunale, commissioned him to compose the score to Ernst Lubitsch’s early American masterpiece Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925/2006) and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra commissioned Brock for a score to Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. (1926/2007). It is this score he recently gave a performance of in Vienna, at the Wiener Konzerthaus, in 2008.

Upcoming projects can be found in the Latest News.
 

Silent-film score restorations: The scores of Charles Chaplin

In January of 1999, he was asked by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, in cooperation with the Chaplin Estate headquartered in Paris, to restore and reconstruct for live performance Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 score to Modern Times.

Mr. Brock gave the dual premieres of the first live performances of Modern Times in June of 2000 in Los Angeles with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and at the World Exposition with the Radio-Philharmonie Hannover des NDR.

And for the past 8 years Mr. Brock has been serving as music director/conductor in nearly 200 performances for the Charles Chaplin family, and has since then been engaged by the Chaplins to restore their father’s scores to City Lights (1931), The Circus (1928), A Dog’s Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918), The Pilgrim (1923) and Pay Day (1922).

In 2003 he created a symphonic concert suite of Modern Times, as well as chamber ensemble versions to A Dog’s Life, Shoulder Arms and The Pilgrim. All Chaplin scores are published by Bourne Music, Inc. New York.

In 2005 he had been commissioned by the Chaplins to re-create a posthumous new score for Chaplin’s only silent dramatic feature, A Woman of Paris (1923).

A unique and unconventional restoration process, Mr. Brock utilized recently discovered recordings of Chaplin at the piano, playing never-before-heard dramatic compositions. After transcribing some twenty hours of Chaplin’s playing, Brock had used this new material, along with some of the film’s original cues, to create a new Chaplin score.

With Timothy Brock’s orchestration (based on the model of City Lights), Woman of Paris received its world premiere on July 9th, 2005, at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, under the direction of Mr. Brock.

Most recently in 2007, Brock was commissioned to restore the last of the great Chaplin features, The Gold Rush (1925). Constituting his 9th restoration for the Chaplin Estate, Brock gave the world premiere of the score to an audience of 5,000 at the Piazza Maggiore, July, 2007. Following that first performance the popular British comedian, and Chaplin fanatic, Paul Merton, commissioned Brock to create a chamber version (for 15 players) of his restoration to The Gold Rush which received its premiere in January, 2008 during the Bristol Silents Festival in Great Britain.

The Chaplin film-concerts have taken Mr. Brock to Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Greece, Italy, Holland, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Spain, and the United States. In April of 2005 he conducted an open-air performance of The Circus in Ansan, marking the first live performance of a Chaplin film in Korea.

Other silent-film score restorations

Conducting engagements

Recent appearances have included the Royal Festival Hall, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Accademia St. Cecilia in Rome, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Barbican Center, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the KKL in Luzern, Teatro Massimo in Palermo, andthe Auditorio de Barcelona and the Cité de la Musique in Paris. In March, 2009, Brock will make his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Modern Times marking its premiere at Symphony Hall.