Elliot Davis is a British composer, musician and music documentary maker.
Davis started his career transcribing musical ideas for Lionel Bart. [1] He then went on to work in the West End of London in a musical capacity on Miss Saigon , Cats , Les Misérables , Blood Brothers and Jesus Christ Superstar . He was musical director for the European premieres of Lucky Stiff , Orpheus and The Demon Headmaster , which premiered at the Pleasance Theatre, London. Davis has also collaborated with Stephen Schwartz (composer of Wicked ) on re-scoring and arranging his Broadway smash Pippin .
Davis's musical Best Friends and Butterflies formed part of the 2008 Official Olympic Handover Celebrations from Beijing to London when it was played by the BBC Big band in Concert.
The original score Davis composed for the 2010 Druid production of The Sliver Tassie by Sean O'Casey performed at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway, was described as providing "an elegaic lilt to O'Caswey's rousing songs" by Irish Theatre Magazine. [2]
For Youth Music Theatre UK he has written three musicals with James Bourne ( Busted / Son of Dork ): Loserville: The Musical (2009) [3] based on the album Welcome to Loserville; Out There (2011), [4] an original musical imagining an Apollo astronaut who mysteriously disappears in 1969; and a musical based on Bourne's time in the band Busted called What I Go to School For - the Busted Musical (2016), [5] which premiered at the Theatre Royal Brighton. Loserville and Out There are both licensed by Music Theatre International.
He has an exclusive songwriting contract with Warner/Chappell Music. His song 'Lifetime of Love' was a finalist in the London International Song Competition and 'The Village Song' was top three in Radio Two's search for a songwriter competition.[ citation needed ]
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber, is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass.
Gareth Paul Gates is an English singer-songwriter and actor. He was the runner-up in the first series of the ITV talent show Pop Idol in 2002. As of 2008, Gates had sold over 3.5 million records in the UK. He is also known for having a stutter, and has talked about his speech impediment publicly.
Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.
James Elliot Bourne is an English singer-songwriter and musician. He is known as the co-founder of pop-punk bands Busted and Son of Dork, and he also created his own electronic project under the alias Future Boy. From 2013 to 2015 he was a member of McBusted, which consisted of himself, Busted bandmate Matt Willis, and McFly.
Matthew Warchus is an English theatre director, filmmaker and dramaturg. He has been the Artistic Director of London's The Old Vic since September 2015.
Son of Dork were a British pop punk band formed by James Bourne after his previous band, Busted, split in January 2005. The name of the band came from a scene in the 1990 film Problem Child where the chant "Son of Dork" is used. Their debut single, "Ticket Outta Loserville", was released in November 2005, reaching No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart. Their second single, "Eddie's Song", reached No. 10 in January 2006.
Welcome to Loserville is the only studio album from British pop punk band Son of Dork. The album was released on 21 November 2005 by Mercury Records. The album was later adapted into a musical, "Loserville the Musical", by band member James Bourne and writer Elliot Davis commissioned and performed by Youth Music Theatre UK and presented at the South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell, in 2009. The show was subsequently retitled "Loserville" and produced professionally by Kevin Wallace, TC Beech and Youth Music Theatre UK at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. It then transferred to the West End's Garrick Theatre and featured UK pop star Chris Hardman.
"What I Go to School For" is the debut single of English pop rock band Busted. It was written by James Bourne, Charlie Simpson, Matt Willis, Steve Robson, and John McLaughlin and produced by Robson. The track was inspired by a teacher that Matt Willis had a crush on at school. Released on 16 September 2002, the song reached number three on the UK Singles Chart. A young Jade Ewen appears in the music video.
Kevin Gerard Wallace is an Irish theatre producer.
George William Stiles is an English composer of musicals for the stage.
The Silver Tassie is an opera in four acts by the English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. The English libretto was written by Amanda Holden based on the 1927/28 play of the same name by Seán O'Casey. The opera was composed between 1997 and 1999.
Paul Griffiths is a Welsh writer, theatre critic and director. He won the Drama Medal at the National Urdd Gobaith Cymru Eisteddfod three times in succession between 1995 and 1997 – the only person ever to do this. Between March 2006 and December 2013 he contributed a controversial weekly theatre column to the National Paper of Wales Y Cymro. He is also a regular contributor on the Welsh language Television Channel S4C and BBC Radio Cymru.
Steven Dexter is a theatre director and writer.
Samuel Alexander "Sandy" Faris was a Northern Irish composer, conductor and writer, known for his television theme tunes, including the theme music for the 1970s TV series Upstairs, Downstairs. He composed and recorded many operas and musicals, and also composed film scores and orchestral works. As a conductor, he was especially known for his revivals of Jacques Offenbach and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.
The Silver Tassie is a four-act Expressionist play about the First World War, written between 1927 and 1928 by the Irish playwright Seán O'Casey. It was O'Casey's fourth play and attacks imperialist wars and the suffering that they cause. O'Casey described the play as "A generous handful of stones, aimed indiscriminately, with the aim of breaking a few windows. I don't think it makes a good play, but it's a remarkable one."
Ashley Lloyd is a British actor and dancer, who has performed in hit musical theatre shows such as Billy Elliot the Musical and Whistle Down the Wind. In 2012 Lloyd appeared in the new musical Loserville at the Garrick Theatre in London. Lloyd appeared in the Original London Cast of Dreamgirls at The Savoy Theatre and is now appearing in Saturday Night Fever at The Peacock Theatre in London. Fans of Hollyoaks might recognise Lloyd from the hit TV show playing Troy.
Loserville is a musical with music and lyrics by James Bourne and Elliot Davis, originally created for Youth Music Theatre UK. The story is based on an album, Welcome to Loserville from Bourne's second band, Son of Dork.
Matthew Price is a British actor, dancer and West End stage and concert singer known for playing Riff Raff in three European tours of The Rocky Horror Show. He is also a composer, having written Before After (2014) and Imaginary (2017) among other musicals and a theatrical producer, being a co-founder with James Yeoburn of the international production company United Theatrical.
British Youth Music Theatre (BYMT), formerly Youth Music Theatre UK, is a UK-based national performing arts organisation founded in December 2003. BYMT provides music theatre training to young people aged 11–21 and a stepping stone to drama school or conservatoire. Members can join either through auditions in January and February onto productions or, without audition, onto summer camps. Most of its productions and summer camps are residential and situated around the UK with productions taking place in both regional and London theatres.