Howard Ellis Carr (26 December 1880 - 16 November 1960) was a British composer and conductor who worked in both Britain and Australia during his career.

In 1898, when he was aged eighteen, his uncle Howard Talbot secured a position for him at Her Majesty's Theatre in Carlisle in county Cumberland, northern England, in order for him to learn the job of musical director.

Whenever a visiting conductor attended the theatre, Carr played either the horn, cello or timpani, instruments upon which he had attained various degrees of proficiency.

[6] In late 1903 Carr was appointed musical director of the Vaudeville Theatre, in London's West End, for the productions of The Cherry Girl, which opened in December 1903, and The Catch of the Season in 1904.

[3][7] Carr composed the music for the songs in Under the Greenwood Tree, a play acted by children and performed at the Scala Theatre in London in December 1906.

[11] Carr arrived in Melbourne on 11 September 1907 aboard the mail steamer Victoria together with two other passengers engaged by Williamson, the leading lady Beatrice Irwin and the stage manager Wybert Stamford.

Carr edited the production of The Lady Dandies, re-writing the finales and composing special ballet music for the play.

[21] After returning to London Carr was initially employed as the musical assistant to Hans Richter at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

[24] In October 1911 the couple's only child was born at Richmond in South London, a boy named Eustace Edward Carr.

[3] A short ballet composed by Carr, In the Jungle, was included in a new revue called Topsy-Turvy, which opened at the Empire Theatre in August 1917.

[28] Carr composed the music for the songs in the operetta Master Wayfarer by J. E. Harold Terry, performed at the Apollo Theatre in December 1917.

[3][30] Carr was a part composer of Shanghai which opened in August 1918 at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, the production in which the Australian actress Dorothy Brunton achieved her breakthrough success in London.

[23] Carr was appointed as the honorary secretary of the Musical Conductors' Association (MCA), formed in London in March 1916 "amidst xenophobic fervour" aroused by the war against Germany.

He wrote that "composers, conductors, and players are coming out of khaki... and if the nation gives them the proper backing they will defeat the Hun in the theatre and concert-room as completely as he was beaten on the gas-soaked fields of France and Flanders".

[3] One notable success was The Rebel Maid, an operetta by Montague Phillips, which Carr conducted for 114 performances from March 1921 at the Empire Theatre.

[34] Carr's suite called The Jolly Roger (a piratical fantasy), was included in the Promenade Concerts season at Queen's Hall commencing in August 1917.

Carr took up the position of musical director for J. C. Williamson Ltd. in the production of the operetta The Desert Song featuring Stephanie Deste, which premiered on 15 September 1928 at His Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne.

[41][42] By late October 1928 Carr was in Sydney as musical director of the J. C. Williamson production of The Vagabond King at Her Majesty's Theatre.

Carr wrote music for the Chinese play The Circle of Chalk and a production of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan by the Independent Theatre.

[19] In September 1931 Carr took on the role of conductor for Sydney's Royal Philharmonic Society, replacing Gerald Peachell who had resigned to return to England.

In the midst of the Great Depression, the Philharmonic Society was being affected by a lack of public support, a decline in subscriber numbers and low morale amongst its members.

With 1935 being the fiftieth anniversary year of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the milestone was celebrated in November 1935 with a restructured orchestra performing Haydn's The Seasons.

[45][47] In December 1932 Carr orchestrated and conducted the first staging of the musical Collits' Inn by Varney Monk, praised by the Sydney Morning Herald as "an Australian opera".

[50][A] From about February 1934, during Alfred Hill's year-long leave of absence from the New South Wales State Conservatorium in Sydney, Carr took his classes in musical theory and rehearsed and conducted the students' orchestra.

[70] Carr also composed choral works, such as The Bush and Ode to the Deity, and staged a dramatized version of Mendelssohn's Elijah in London (1933) and in Australia (1938).

[10] He managed to replicate the success of Three Heroes during the Second World War with another patriotic piece, the Sir Walter Raleigh overture, premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in June 1940.