James Bond film composer to play a pub gig in Birmingham

Award winning film composer David Arnold, with five Bond blockbusters among his many credits, is to play an intimate PUB show in Birmingham, sharing behind-the-scenes secrets of his big screen songs.

Backed by a six-piece band rather than the usual orchestra, the Grammy, Ivor Novello and BAFTA award winner plans to include soundtrack songs spanning his career – singing them himself.

Arnold is one of the UK’s leading film and TV composers, writing for Pierce Brosnan Bond movies Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, and both Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

Casino Royale theme You Know My Name, sung by the late Soundgarden rock frontman Chris Cornell, was a major chart success, and Arnold memorably performed the song with Cornell live in London’s Hyde Park.

US band Garbage also scored a worldwide hit with the theme from Pierce Brosnan’s penultimate 007 outing The World Is Not Enough.

Arnold has written for box office hits includingIndependence Day, Godzilla, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Narnia adventure Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and was musical director for the London 2012 Olympics closing ceremony, starring The Who and The Spice Girls.

Film composer David Arnold to play a gig at a Birmingham pub renowned for its live music

From that packed night at the Olympic Stadium – now home to Premiership side West Ham United – to a November 23 date at the humble Hare & Hounds pub in Kings Heath may seem like a giant leap, but it is one Arnold relishes.

The composer says he plans to put the spotlight on his own songs ‘with the voice that wrote them’, with a setlist featuring his most notable compositions, plus some surprises, and the stories behind them.

“My earliest musical memories were of songs,” he says. “I think song is the finest of all art forms. As a songwriter I see them conceived, developed and delivered into the world. From that point on they stop being mine. They become part of the fabric of a film, a show or someone else’s record. Principally, though, they belong to the audience.

“This is a way of me revisiting the early years of these songs, reclaiming them for an evening, sharing the stories behind them and doing my best to give some insight as to how, and why, they came into existence. Most unusually, I’ll be singing them in my own voice – the first voice anyone hears when I deliver a new song, but a voice that the public never does get to hear.”

As well as his film work, David Arnold has collaborated with Bjork, Massive Attack and Pulp, wrote songs for Made in Dagenham: The Musical, and his CV also includes TV shows such as Sherlock, Good Omens, and Little Britain.

For more information and to book tickets to see Film composer David Arnold at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath, Birmingham go to: David Arnold at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath