Karas may refer to:

Places

• Karas Region, Namibia
• Karaš River, a river in Serbia and Romania (Romanian Caraş)
• Karas Island, an island in Sebakor Bay, West Papua, Indonesia
• Karaś, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, a village in north-central Poland
• Karaś, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, a village in north Poland
• Karaś Lake, a lake in north-east Poland

People

• Saint Karas
• Bishop Karas, bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United States
• Anton Karas, Viennese zither player
• Archie Karas (born 1950), Greek gambler
• Jan Karaś (born 1959), Polish football (soccer) player
• Josef Karas (born 1978), Czech decathlete
• Marios Karas (born 1974), Cypriot football defender
• Michael Karas (born 1952), German physical chemist
• Othmar Karas (born 1957), Austrian politician and Member of the European Parliament

Other

• Karas (anime) by Sato Keiichi
• PZL.23 Karaś, a mid-1930s Polish light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft
• Karas is a French death metal band.

Look up karaś in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Karas on a 1951 autograph card.

Anton Karas (July 7, 1906 – January 10, 1985) was a Viennese zither player, best known for his soundtrack to Carol Reed's The Third Man.^[1]

Early life[link]

Born in Vienna, of Hungarian and Czech origin, one of five children of a factory worker, Anton Karas was already keen on music as a child. He desired to become a band leader, which due to the family's financial situation was impossible. However, he was allowed to learn to play an instrument, as were his two brothers and two sisters. He later reported that his first zither was one he found in his grandmother's attic, at the age of 12.

As ordered by his father, he started an apprenticeship as a tool and die maker at the age of 14, while also taking music evening courses at a private institution. He successfully finished his apprenticeship in 1924 and worked in a car factory until being unemployed in January 1925. As he had already begun to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna in 1924, he subsequently earned his living as an entertainer in a Heuriger (a wine bar, typically with a garden, usually selling the year's new wine) and soon found himself earning more income than his father. He continued his studies until 1928.

Career[link]

In 1930, he was married, followed by the birth of his daughter three months later. From 1939–1945 he was with German Wehrmacht anti-aircraft warfare, temporarily in Russia, where he also took a zither along. He lost more than one instrument due to war action, but always managed somehow to find another one.

[edit] The Third Man

In 1948, director Carol Reed was preparing to shoot The Third Man in Vienna and decided to have Karas playing the zither for the soundtrack.^[2] Reluctant Karas was invited to London and lived with Reed while composing the score, and at that time was drawing a considerable salary of 30 GBP a week, plus 20 in pocket money, with expenses. The soundtrack was created in Korda's London Films studios, and Karas, who was homesick most of the time, worked up to 14 hours a day for twelve weeks: He had not been a composer before, but a great performer, and added improvisations to his repertoire. Later, Karas would mention that Reed almost "kept him like a slave"^{[citation needed]} when he wanted to go back to Vienna more than once.

The film, not least due to its music, turned into a gigantic success which changed Karas' life.^[3] As a result, he toured all over the world and performed for many celebrities, among them members of the British Royal family (Princess Margaret had invited him to London's fashionable Empress Club, where he played twice a week during his stay at London), Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, members of the Swedish royal family, and Pope Pius XII).^[4]

By the end of 1949, a half million copies of "The Harry Lime Theme" had been sold, an unprecedented amount for the time. The success of the score also caused a surge in zither sales.

In Austria, the film opened on March 10, 1950, in Vienna's Apollo Kino, and it initially offended some Viennese inhabitants, as it focused on the disgrace of the destroyed city. Vienna's newspaper critics hated the film, except for its music.^[5] When Karas returned to Austria after his first world tour in July 1950, he was welcomed by chancellor Leopold Figl and other members of the government. Most importantly, the public liked the film. In Brigittenau, where Karas was born, people queued for tickets which were sold out eight days in advance.

Karas, however, disliked all of the glamour: "I never was a star, and never felt like one. It is because of that film that I was pushed from one place to the other… My only desire was to be back home again."^{[citation needed]} he stated later. However, he went on tour again in 1951, travelling to Montreal and Las Vegas, followed by a number of other tours, including Japan in 1962, 1969 and 1972, where he performed for emperor Hirohito.

In 1954, he opened his own Heuriger which immediately was fashionable among Hollywood celebrities like Orson Welles, Gina Lollobrigida, Curd Jürgens, Hans Moser, Paul Hörbiger, Marika Röck and Johannes Heesters; therefore becoming a tourist attraction. However, he was still not satisfied, as he would have preferred to perform for locals who would understand him, his language and music. Because of this, he retired and retreated from the limelight in 1966, explaining "I'm not a tourist guy, and what I did there hadn't hardly anything to do with 'Vienna Heuriger'".^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

1. ^ The Third Man on YouTube [1]
2. ^ Where and how Reed and Karas met, is not sure. There are a couple of versions, and therefore most of them are legends.
3. ^ "Wherever the film is shown you can almost see the procession from cinema to gramophone shop. In its first three weeks sales have reached 100,000." (The Continental Daily Mail quoted by Ulrike Granögger, p.84.)
4. ^ Karas's biography by Peter Payer, p. 13.
5. ^ "Der Sieveringer Zithervirtuose hat den Streifen kompositorisch untermalt und ersetzt mit seinem Instrument wirkungsvoll ein Orchester. Er beherrscht die Zither mit einer Virtuosität, die aller Anerkennung würdig ist." (Die Presse, 1950-3-11) Rough translation: "The zither-virtuoso from Sievering has composed his accompaniments for the film and effectively replaces, with his instrument, a whole orchestra. He plays the zither with a virtuosity that is praiseworthy."

External links[link]

• Anton Karas page by his Grandson (english version)
• Karas with celebrities in his "Heurige"
• Biography at Allmusic
• In Search of the Third Man at Amazon.com
• Karas biography by Peter Payer from historical research, sponsored by the city of Vienna in 2005 (15 pages, in German).

Bear McCreary
at San Diego House of Blues 2009
Background information
Born	(1979-02-17) February 17, 1979 (age 33) Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States
Occupations	Composer
Years active	1998–present
Labels	La La Land Records

Bear McCreary (born 17 February 1979) is an American composer and musician living in Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his work on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica television series.

Biography[link]

McCreary was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and spent most of his formative years in Bellingham, Washington. He is the son of author Laura Kalpakian and professor Jay McCreary of University of Hawaii. He is of Irish and Armenian descent. He studied under the renowned film score composer Elmer Bernstein at the USC Thornton School of Music, during which time he reconstructed and re-orchestrated Bernstein's 1963 score for Kings of the Sun. Their collaboration allowed for the complete score to be available as a soundtrack album for the first time in forty years.^[1]

From 1998 until 2005, McCreary built up a body of work scoring short films. McCreary is a pianist and a self-taught accordionist, and plays in the avant-jazz band 17 Billion Miles of DNA.^[2]

McCreary is married ^[3] to singer/songwriter Raya Yarbrough, with whom he worked on the music of Battlestar Galactica.^[4]

Work[link]

Television[link]

[edit] Battlestar Galactica and Caprica

In 2003, McCreary worked under primary composer Richard Gibbs on the 3-hour miniseries which served as a pilot for the re-imagined series of Battlestar Galactica. When the show was picked up, Gibbs opted not to devote full time to the regular series' production, and McCreary became the sole composer. He worked on the series until it reached its conclusion in 2009, scoring over 70 episodes. To date, six Battlestar Galactica soundtrack albums have been released, and have garnered a great deal of critical acclaim^[5][6] and commercial success. The soundtracks for season two and three ranked amongst Amazon.com's Top 30 Music Sales on their first days of release.^[1]

McCreary composed for Caprica, a prequel series set in the fictional Battlestar Galactica universe. On February 18, 2012, Bear announced that he will compose the score to the 2-hour pilot movie Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome.

[edit] Eureka

McCreary is currently the composer for Syfy's Eureka, now in its fifth season, after having taken over from Mutato Muzika starting with the second season of the show in 2007.

[edit] Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

He has scored both seasons of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008–2009).

[edit] Human Target

Bear provided the score for the series Human Target (based on the comic book of the same name), on to which the pilot episode and main theme score had been recorded with a full orchestra.^[7] The series has the distinction of being one of the few with largest orchestras on television today.

The score to the finale of season 1, "Christopher Chance", utilized the largest orchestra ever assembled for episodic television, and he took the opportunity to re-record the main title theme with a new orchestration with this larger ensemble.

In July 2010, he received his first Emmy nomination for the Human Target theme.^[8]

In a post on his blog on July 25, 2010, Bear announced the new creative leadership brought in for season 2 had not asked him to return for it, and he would be leaving the series.^[9]

[edit] The Walking Dead and The Cape

During Comic-Con 2010, Bear McCreary attended panels for AMC's The Walking Dead and NBC's The Cape to announce he would be composing the score for both television series.^[10][11]

Feature films[link]

Bear McCreary made his theatrical feature film scoring debut with Step Up 3D.^[12] He has also composed the scores for several direct-to-DVD features, including Rest Stop, Rest Stop 2: Don't Look Back and Wrong Turn 2: Dead End.

Bear is currently working on The Knights of Badassdom, his second movie with director Joe Lynch (of Wrong Turn 2) and third time for actress Summer Glau.

Video games[link]

McCreary worked on the Capcom titled video game for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, Dark Void.^[13]

He has made an 8-bit rendition of the Dark Void theme, which was originally an April Fools joke. However, the theme was used for the 8-bit prequel, Dark Void Zero. He composed all the songs in an 8-bit fashion by connecting the wires on an actual NES console and cartridge to create authenticity.

Bear composed the soundtrack for SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs for the PS3, which came out in 2011.^[14]

He arranged James Rolfe's Angry Video Game Nerd 2010 Christmas video for the You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch song parody, with orchestra and 8-bit audio elements.

Albums[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Bear McCreary Website
• Bear McCreary's YouTube Channel
• Bear McCreary at the Internet Movie Database
• Audio Interview on GeeksOn!