The Crowd: Bond brings out the music lovers

Led by celebrated guest conductor Carl Davis, the symphony performed theme songs from the movies based on the thrillers Ian Fleming penned as part of a three-night set of concerts themed around Agent 007.

The audience was taken on a musical journey, revisiting the theme music of 23 Bond films produced for a worldwide audience over a nearly 50-year span. Davis conducted the Pacific Symphony with great flourish, interjecting anecdotes and sharing with the full house in the concert hall the backstories associated with the leading men who have played the title role, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig.

"Ian Fleming wanted David Niven to play the James Bond role," Davis said, "Instead, they cast a bodybuilder-Scotsman from the chorus line of London's West End theatrical district."

The talented Mary Carewe, a diminutive female singer with the vocal range and power of a woman twice her size, joined Davis and the symphony, alternating performance between symphonic and vocal presentations. She brought to life the memories of such films as "Diamonds Are Forever," "Live and Let Die," "Thunderball," and Davis' personal favorite, "A View To a Kill," with theme music written and performed by Duran Duran.

The consummate Davis — with credits that include everything from classical composition and performance to Broadway, film, television and the scoring of compositions for the world's most prestigious theatrical companies like the Royal Shakespeare Co., the National Theatre of England, the New York City Opera, and so many more — commented that his experience in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall was exemplary.

"I have admired the work of acoustician Russell Johnson, and I find this hall to be an exquisite studio," he said. "Absolutely thrilling. I would love to come back to do a classical concert here."

At 74, Davis has a schedule that would exhaust a musician half his age. Traveling the world conducting, as well as composing and producing multiple projects at a time, the maestro — who looks a bit like Albert Einstein and even more like the Wizard of Oz — conducted with grand style and wore full-length robes of shining metallic fabric. They added a generous touch of artistic flair to the concert experience.

Post-concert , the conductor, in his floor-length sea-foam green metallic robe, sat down in the concert hall's Leatherby's Café Rouge with his British actress wife Jean Boht and extended family members who had come in from London, New York and Los Angeles for the event. Following three standing ovations and two encores, and showing no signs of exhaustion, Davis, who has a mane of white hair, dined on a plate of scampi and rice and talked about an upcoming project that is of great importance to him.

"I'm working on a large-scale choral work for a children's choir and the Hallé Orchestra titled, 'Last Train To Tomorrow,'" Davis said. "The work is based on the subject of a little-known World War II-era story of compassion about the rescue of Jewish children from Nazi-occupied European countries."

The operation known as "Kindertransport" tells the story of brave men and women who risked their lives in convincing Nazi leaders that they should allow the deportation of children up to the age of 17, which would rid the Nazis of the responsibility of the "Final Solution."

Davis is also known for symphonic rescoring of classic American silent films, creating more than 50 new scores for movies including "Ben-Hur" (1925), "The Thief of Baghdad," "Intolerance," "The Phantom of the Opera," and silent film star Harold Lloyd's "Safety Last."