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Mark Gibbons, Better known as Mark Mercury is an American composer. He has arranged, produced, recorded, and composed music since the 1970s.
Mercury is an American composer whose music falls into several genres: space, electronic, electro-acoustic, ambient, cinematic, and contemporary classical/serious music. Using orchestral timbres and futuristic electronic sounds, Mark creates soundscapes, albums, and scores for modern dance, ballet, film, video, and high-tech planetariums.
In 1988 Mercury began creating planetarium soundtracks and by 2011 had scored 38 shows. His first album, “Music of the Domes” (1992), contained excerpts from his planetarium soundtracks. Staying in the space music vein, Mercury created all new recordings for his second album, “The Art of Space” (1997), which featured five space poems written by professional poets, recited by actors, and underscored with music. His third album, "Music from Cycles of Spheres" (2002), consisted of three suites drawn from his planetarium scores. The music is part of the touring art exhibition "Cycles of Spheres: Mapping the Planets in Silk and Sound," featuring the silk batiks of artist Mary Edna Fraser.
In recent years Mercury has worked to a large extent on composing music for modern dance and ballet. His music can be heard in such works as Francisco Martinez Dancetheatre’s “Orbital Dances” and The Ballet Collective’s “Spaces Between” and “Dawn to Dusk.”
In his early school years Mercury studied classical piano, jazz, blues, and arranging. He began his professional music career in the late 1970s in Hollywood working as a songwriter, studio musician, record arranger and producer. In 1979 and 1981 he co-founded two music production companies, Bullets and California Star Music, through which he and his partners wrote songs, produced records, and composed and produced the music for animated series, animated features, television programs, videos, and commercials.
Mercury’s musical output prior to 1988 was in a variety of styles, tailored to the currents in the music and entertainment industries. With his entrance into the world of planetarium scores, Mercury’s musical style became more focused and began its evolution into what it is today. His album releases are under his own record label: Blue Chromium Records.
Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer, pianist, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is 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 over other forms of music.
Isao Tomita, often known simply as Tomita, was a Japanese composer, regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music and space music, and as one of the most famous producers of analog synthesizer arrangements. In addition to creating note-by-note realizations, Tomita made extensive use of the sound-design capabilities of his instrument, using synthesizers to create new sounds to accompany and enhance his electronic realizations of acoustic instruments. He also made effective use of analog music sequencers and the Mellotron, and featured futuristic science-fiction themes, while laying the foundations for synth-pop music and trance-like rhythms. Many of his albums are electronic versions and adaptations of familiar classical music pieces. He received four Grammy Award nominations for his 1974 album based on music by Claude Debussy, Snowflakes Are Dancing.
Joby Talbot is a British composer. He has written for a wide variety of purposes, with a broad range of styles, including instrumental and vocal concert music, film and television scores, pop arrangements and works for dance. He is known, to sometimes disparate audiences, for quite different works.
Jocelyn Pook is a composer who is known for her scores for many films, including Eyes Wide Shut, The Merchant of Venice and The Wife.
Mark Mancina is an American film composer. A veteran of Hans Zimmer's Media Ventures, Mancina has scored over sixty films and television series including Speed, Bad Boys, Twister, Tarzan, Training Day, Brother Bear, Criminal Minds, Blood+,Planes and Moana.
Max Richter is a German-born British composer and pianist. He works within postminimalist and contemporary classical styles. Richter is classically trained, having graduated in composition from the University of Edinburgh, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and studied with Luciano Berio in Italy.
Hans Hugo Harold Faltermeyer is a German musician, composer and record producer.
Benn Lee Jordan is an American musician operating under many pseudonyms. Since 1999, his most widely distributed electronic music has been released under the name of The Flashbulb. Other names Jordan has released as are Acidwolf, Human Action Network, and FlexE.
Space music, also called spacemusic or space ambient, is a subgenre of new-age music and is described as "tranquil, hypnotic and moving". It is derived from ambient music and is associated with lounge music, easy listening, and elevator music.
Jonathan Julian Hopkins is an English musician and producer who writes and performs electronic music. He began his career playing keyboards for Imogen Heap, and has produced but also contributed to albums by Brian Eno, Coldplay, David Holmes and others.
Kurt Swinghammer is a Canadian singer-songwriter and visual artist based in Toronto.
Daniel Deacon is an American composer and electronic musician based in Baltimore, Maryland.
Claus Ogerman was a German arranger, conductor, and composer best known for his work with Billie Holiday, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Frank Sinatra, Michael Brecker, and Diana Krall.
Nico Asher Muhly is an American contemporary classical music composer and arranger who has worked and recorded with both classical and pop musicians. A prolific composer, he has composed for many notable symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles and has had two operas commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Since 2006, he has released nine studio albums, many of which are collaborative, including 2017's Planetarium with Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner & James McAlister. He is a member of the Icelandic music collective and record label Bedroom Community.
Space-themed music is any music, from any genre or style, with lyrics or titles relating to outer space or spaceflight.
Michel van der Aa is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music.
Bryce David Dessner is an American composer and guitarist based in Paris, as well as a member of the rock band the National. Dessner's twin brother, Aaron is also a member of the group. Together, they write the music in collaboration with lead singer and lyricist Matt Berninger.
Peter Brewis is a composer and instrumentalist who has been active in several spheres of music from ballet and modern dance to music theatre and rock music. Although he was classically trained, studying under the famous French music educator Nadia Boulanger, he has also written for comedy shows such as Spitting Image, for which he composed "I've Never Met a Nice South African."
Rhian Sheehan is a New Zealand composer and producer born in Nelson and now based in Wellington. He is known for his fusing of orchestral chamber music and piano, with ambient electronic and post-rock cinematic atmospheres. He has also written music for film, television, video games, exhibitions, advertisements, roller coaster rides, and planetarium dome shows.
Sai Shravanam is an Indian music producer, recording and scoring engineer. He is a self trained tabla player and one of the few classically trained sound engineers in the country. He is the owner and founder of Resound India in the city of Chennai.