Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for numerous film scores, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. He has written a number of operas, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; Letters, Riddles and Writs; Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs; Facing Goya; Man and Boy: Dada; Love Counts; and Sparkie: Cage and Beyond. He has written six concerti, five string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band. He is also a performing pianist. Nyman prefers to write opera rather than other forms of music.
Tha Eastsidaz was a hip hop trio consisting of Snoop Dogg, Tray Deee and Goldie Loc. Their first appearance was on Tommy Boy Records' The Ride: Music from Dimension with Crooked Eye Q on a Battlecat-produced song called "Feels So Good" in 1997.
Iiro Rantala is a Finnish jazz pianist. He studied piano in the jazz department of Sibelius Academy and classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music. He is one of the best known Finnish jazz pianists, both in Finland and abroad. Rantala is a pianist and composer with Trio Töykeät, a Finnish jazz trio. In addition to jazz, he has composed some classical pieces, most notably the Concerto for Piano and Concerto in G♯ΔA♭.
The Michael Nyman Band, formerly known as the Campiello Band, is a group formed as a street band for a 1976 production of Carlo Goldoni's 1756 play, Il Campiello directed by Bill Bryden at the Old Vic. The band did not wish to break up after the production ended, so its director, Michael Nyman, began composing music for the group to perform, beginning with "In Re Don Giovanni", written in 1977. Originally made up of old instruments such as rebecs, sackbuts and shawms alongside more modern instruments like the banjo and saxophone to produce as loud a sound as possible without amplification, it later switched to a fully amplified line-up of string quartet, double bass, clarinet, three saxophones, horn, trumpet, bass trombone, bass guitar, and piano. This line up has been variously altered and augmented for some works.
David Roach is a British saxophonist who released a solo single, "Emotional Jungle" in 1984. His album, I Love Sax reached #73 in the UK Albums Chart in April that year. As a Coda-Landscape recording artist in the 1980s David made 2 albums 'Running with the River ' and 'The Talking City'.
Andrew (Andy) Findon is an English woodwind player. He was educated at Harrow County School and The Royal College of Music. He has been baritone saxophone and flute player in the Michael Nyman Band since 1980, and is also a member of The Home Service and Acoustic Earth. He is a Pearl Flutes International Artist and endorsee of Forestone reeds. He is the owner of the platinum flute built by Charles Morley in 1950 for Geoffrey Gilbert.
Richard Watkins is a horn player. He performs as a concerto soloist and chamber music player. He was Principal Horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra from 1985 to 1996, a position he relinquished to devote more time to his solo career.
The Piano is the original soundtrack, on the Virgin Records label, of the 1993 Academy Award-winning film The Piano. The original score was composed by Michael Nyman and is his twentieth album release. Despite being called a "soundtrack", this is a partial score re-recording, as Nyman himself also performs the piano on the album. The music is performed by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Nyman with Michael Nyman Band members John Harle, David Roach and Andrew Findon performing the prominent saxophone work.
Man on Wire is a 2008 British-American biographical documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. It is based on Petit's book, To Reach the Clouds, released in paperback with the title Man on Wire. The title of the film is taken from the police report that led to the arrest of Petit, whose performance had lasted for almost one hour. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside re-enactments and present-day interviews with the participants, including Barry Greenhouse, an insurance executive who served as the inside man.
London Voices is a London-based choral ensemble founded by Terry Edwards in 1973. In its early years, it also incorporated the London Opera Chorus and London Sinfonietta Voices and Chorus. In 2004, Ben Parry (musician), became Co-Director of the ensemble. Ben is also Director of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain and Assistant Director or Music at King's College, Cambridge. London Voices has been involved in many performances, recordings of operas and CD and film soundtracks, including The Hobbit , Hunger Games, the prequel trilogy of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series, The Iron Lady, Enemy at the Gates, La traviata, and The Passion of the Christ. They have recorded with such diverse artists as Luciano Pavarotti, Dave Brubeck, Paul McCartney, Queen, Deaf Havana and have performed in concert venues all over the world, including London, Aldeburgh, Paris, New York, Shanghai and Lucerne.
Decay Music is the 1976 debut album by Michael Nyman, released on Brian Eno's Obscure Records music label. The two works on the album, "1-100" and "Bell Set No. 1" (1974) are both built around the musical concept of decay. Both of these experiment with percussive, long decay musical forms. "1-100" is played at half the speed it was recorded. It was written for Peter Greenaway's film of the same title but rejected because it was too long. It was inspired by Frederic Rzewski's Les Moutons de Panurge, which Nyman often played with the Scratch Orchestra.
The Essential Michael Nyman Band is a studio album featuring a collection of music by Michael Nyman written for the films of Peter Greenaway and newly performed by the Michael Nyman Band. It is the seventeenth album release by Nyman. The album features liner notes by Annette Morreau, who describes the album as "a summation and digest of ten years of progress in the performance of music by a composer -- a composer with whom, so evidently, a group of friends and expert musicians intimately identify their total commitment, virtuosity, and joyous enthusiasm."
Michael Nyman for Yohji Yamamoto is volume 2 of Yohji Yamamoto's series of albums, The Show. The album features the solo violin work Yamamoto Perpetuo, which Nyman has since adapted into the String Quartet No. 4 and the orchestral work, Strong on Oaks, Strong on the Causes of Oaks. The violin is played by Alexander Balanescu, and Nyman can be heard on one track, "Song L," at the piano.
Taking a Line for a Second Walk is the name of piano duo reduction of a dance work for orchestra by Michael Nyman, Basic Black, written in 1986 for the Houston Ballet. It is eponymous with a 1994 album on Work Music on which it constitutes approximately half the material. The album is also known as Music for Two Pianos, which is given as the album's name on the back cover and insert back, while Taking a Line for a Second Walk appears on the front cover, spine, and physical disc. The performers are identified on the front cover, and all of the booklet, as The Zoo II, and on the back cover as "The Zoo Duet". As one of the tracks on the album is "Lady in the Red Hat" from A Zed & Two Noughts, also known as Zoo, this is often seen as a reference to that film. A photograph of the duo is inside the booklet, two young women in black on a black background, leaving only their wedding banded-hands and faces visible, with "The Zoo II" as the only caption. The pianists are identified as Helen Hodkinson and Brenda Russell in the Michael Nyman discography on the 1995 promotional compilation Michael Nyman.
The Suit and the Photograph is a 1998 album by Michael Nyman with the Michael Nyman Band, recorded in 1995. On this album, Nyman is the composer, conductor, and producer, and wrote the liner notes. The album contains two works, String Quartet No. 4 and 3 Quartets. The album is named for its cover photograph by August Sander, which Nyman had associated with the Michael Nyman Band since its inception in 1977. He cites a description of the photograph by John Berger, in an essay of the same title, describing that the suits deform the working class rural men just enough to "undermine physical dignity." Both of the pieces on the album originated in Japan. It is Nyman's second release on EMI and his 33rd in general, but is not designated part of a series, as EMI had done with Concertos. Said Nyman of EMI, "I didn't excite them, and they didn't excite me." Nyman's only further releases on EMI would be the UK edition of Ravenous, featuring remixes by William Orbit, and The Actors, both film scores.
Strong on Oaks, Strong on the Causes of Oaks is a 1998 album by the English Sinfonia conducted by Bramwell Tovey. The work, by Michael Nyman, is paired with The Protecting Veil by John Tavener featuring Josephine Knight on the cello. The photography and liner notes indicate that Nyman was directly involved in the album, the premiere recording of the work, while Tavener, whose piece, eleven years old at the time of the recording, has been recorded more than once, is represented by a headshot and stock commentary from Richard Steinetz.
Out of the Ruins is a choral work by Michael Nyman for an eponymous BBC documentary by Agnieszka Piotrowska in commemorating the first anniversary of the 1988 Spitak earthquake in Armenia 7 December 1988, which aired on the BBC's 40 Minutes. The texts are from Grigor Narekatsi's Book of Lamentations. It was conducted by Khoren Meykhnanejian.
The Piano Concerto/MGV is the 23rd album by Michael Nyman, released in 1994. It contains two compositions, The Piano Concerto and MGV. The first is performed by Kathryn Stott and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Michael Nyman, and the second is performed by the Michael Nyman Band and Orchestra with Michael Nyman at the piano.
The Piano Sings is a 2005 solo album by Michael Nyman featuring personal interpretations of film music he wrote between 1993 and 2003. It is his second release on his own label, MN Records, and his 49th release overall. The album was released alongside a concert tour.
A concerto is a musical work generally composed of three parts or movements, in which, usually, one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.
