Michael J McEvoy

Last updated

Michael J McEvoy
MJM pic 0021 good B-W.jpg
Photo by Peter Saunders
Background information
Born (1961-08-29) August 29, 1961 (age 62)
Origin Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Musician
  • orchestrator
  • composer
Instrument(s)
  • Keyboards
  • guitar
  • bass guitar
  • viola
Years active1987–present
LabelsRezzonator Music
Formerly of Traffic

Michael J McEvoy (born August 29, 1961) is an American screen composer, orchestrator and multi-instrumentalist. [1]

Contents

1980s

As a session musician, writer and arranger, McEvoy worked on various projects with the producer Adam Kidron, including albums by Delta 5, Orange Juice, Scritti Politti and Ian Dury. In 1988, he met Curiosity Killed the Cat and joined the group for their second album, Getahead , as a co-writer and keyboard player. In 1989, he scored his first feature film, Vroom, (directed by Beeban Kidron starring Clive Owen and David Thewlis) followed by Bearskin in 1990 starring Tom Waits.

1990s

During the 1990s, McEvoy's credits as a songwriter included songs by Soul II Soul on their album Volume II: 1990 New Decade and the soul diva Teena Marie ("Since Day One" on Ivory ). He co-produced the James Taylor Quartet album Supernatural Feeling and was the musical director on tours with Soul II Soul and Steve Winwood, playing keyboards, Hammond organ and guitar in the 1994 line-up when a reformed Traffic embarked on an 88-date tour of the US and Europe including performing at Woodstock '94.

Film and TV work

Throughout the 1990s, McEvoy scored documentaries for TV channels in the US and the UK: PBS, A&E, C4, ITN and Discovery. Many of McEvoy's long form documentary work has been with the director Gary Johnstone, including ITN Factual's Battle of Hood and Bismarck [2] and "Einstein's Big Idea" for the PBS Nova series. Other notable documentaries include BBC's Storyville: French Beauty, directed by Pascale Lamche. During this period he was nominated for regional Emmys in the US for Ryman: Mother Church of Country Music and Tennessee Yearbook, winning the latter in 2002. [3]

In 2003, McEvoy attended The Royal College of Music, where he was the PRS Sir Arthur Bliss Memorial Scholar [4] and gained a MMus in composition for screen. On graduating in July 2005, he was awarded the Joseph Horovitz Prize for Screen Composition, the first time it had been awarded since 2001. McEvoy then took on the role of area leader for the screen composition at The Royal College of Music, a post he held from September 2005 until August 2008.

In 2007, he worked closely as an orchestrator and co-writer with the DJ and producer Paul Oakenfold on the score for an award-winning Japanese anime feature Vexille , directed by Fumihiko Sori, and in the following year Overture Pictures' Nothing Like the Holidays directed by Alfredo De Villa. In 2008, McEvoy worked with the filmmaker Richard Linklater on Me and Orson Welles . McEvoy wrote original music and had an acting role playing Orson Welles' musical director.

In 2010, McEvoy scored two independent UK features, Forget Me Not and Just Inès . Other film music credits include a jazz track (under the pseudonym "The Freddie Carleone Quartet") used in the feature film Wild Target , a song co-written with Mary Leay ("Take me as I Could Be") in the film The Decoy Bride and additional music for the movie Wild Card .

Recent film work includes string arrangements on music cues and songs for the film and album project David Brent: Life on the Road , and the score for Finding Your Feet directed by Richard Loncraine for Entertainment One, released worldwide in February 2018.

McEvoy's television work has included the title music for series 3 of the British music TV series Live From Abbey Road , the score for a 20 part Nickelodeon TV series Summer in Transylvania , series 4 and 5 of the UK BAFTA-nominated BBC series Dani's House and series 5 of Young Dracula on CBBC. He also scored the music for the documentary series for National Geographic titled Alien Deep. In 2016, McEvoy composed the music on the 2-part ITV/PBS/Masterpiece Theatre drama Dark Angel, about the life of Victorian serial killer Mary Ann Cotton.

2018 documentaries included the Peabody Award winning The Jazz Ambassadors , a BBC4/PBS/Arte/ZDF co-production, The Queen's Coronation in Colour and Queen of the World for ITV/Oxford Films and HBO. McEvoy also composed the original score to Churchill and the Movie Mogul, premiered at the British Film Institute in January 2019.

In 2019, McEvoy's Mother Medusae was nominated for an Ivors Composer/Ivor Novello Award in the jazz composition for small ensemble category. [5]

Solo recordings

His third album. The Long Way Home, was released in March 2014 on his Rezzonator Music label.

Previous albums are Terra Cognita and Night Sea Journey.

Related Research Articles

Jamshied Sharifi is an American composer and musician. He was born in Topeka, Kansas to an Iranian father and an American mother. At an early age, Sharifi was exposed to Jazz and Middle Eastern music by his father and to European classical and church music by his mother. He began to study classical piano at age five and quickly developed a thirst for musical instruction and a desire to improvise. At age nine he began studying guitar and drums, and at age ten added flute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Herrmann</span> American composer (1911–1975)

Bernard Herrmann was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. Alex Ross writes that "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Arnold</span> British film composer

David Arnold is a British film composer whose credits include scoring five James Bond films, as well as Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998) and the television series Little Britain and Sherlock. For Independence Day, he received a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television, and for Sherlock, he and co-composer Michael Price won a Creative Arts Emmy for the score of "His Last Vow", the final episode in the third series. Arnold scored the BBC / Amazon Prime series Good Omens (2019) adapted by Neil Gaiman from his book Good Omens, written with Terry Pratchett. Arnold is a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

Craig Armstrong, is a Scottish composer of modern orchestral music, electronica and film scores. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 1981, and has since written music for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nitin Sawhney</span> British musician

Nitin Sawhney is a British musician, producer and composer. A recipient of the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement award in 2017, among multiple international awards throughout his career. Sawhney's work combines Asian and other worldwide influences with elements of electronica and often explores themes such as multiculturalism, politics, and spirituality. Sawhney is also active in the promotion of arts and cultural matters, is chair of the PRS Foundation, on the senate of the Ivor Novello Academy, on the board of trustees of theatre company Complicité, and is a patron of numerous film festivals, venues, and educational institutions. In 2021 he was an ambassador for the Royal Albert Hall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ryan Shore</span> Composer, Songwriter, Music Producer, Music Director, Conductor

Ryan Shore is a Canadian composer, songwriter, conductor, music producer, and music director for film, television, virtual reality, records, games, concerts, and theater. He is often known from his scores for Star Wars, Scooby-Doo!, Elmo, and Go! Go! Cory Carson. He is the nephew of Academy Award winning film composer Howard Shore.

Ramachandra Borcar is a Montreal-born musician and composer of mixed Indian and Danish background. He is also known under the monikers Ramasutra and DJ Ram.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Kallis</span> Musical artist

George Kallis is a film and TV composer based in Los Angeles.

Donald Quan is a Canadian composer of film and world music, best known for writing the scores to television shows Relic Hunter and Mutant X.

Jonathan Goldstein was an English composer of music for film, television, advertising, theatre, and live events. His work encompassed a range of contemporary classical styles with orchestral, jazz, electro-acoustic and world influences.

Laura Anne Karpman is an American composer, whose work has included music for film, television, video games, theater, and the concert hall. She has won five Emmy Awards for her work. Karpman was trained at The Juilliard School, where she played jazz, and honed her skills scatting in bars.

Bobby Sanabria is an American drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, documentary producer, educator, activist, radio show host, and writer of Puerto Rican descent who specializes in jazz and Latin jazz.

Guy Gross is an Australian film and television composer. He is known most for writing the award-winning music for the Australian science fiction series Farscape and the international hit film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. He also composed for the animated television series Blinky Bill and Dumb Bunnies. He has 91 credits as screen composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Keane</span> Musical artist

Brian Keane is an American composer, music producer, and guitarist. Keane has been described as "a musician's musician, a composer's composer, and one of the most talented producers of a generation" by Billboard magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Britell</span> American film composer

Nicholas Britell is an American film and television composer. He has received numerous accolades including a Emmy Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards and a Grammy Award. He has received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score for Barry Jenkins' Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), and Adam McKay's Don't Look Up (2021). He also scored McKay's The Big Short (2015) and Vice (2018). He is also known for scoring Battle of the Sexes (2017), Cruella (2021), and She Said (2022).

Tandis Jenhudson is a British musician, composer and medical doctor, best known for his work on film and television soundtracks. He has received two Royal Television Society award nominations and is the first composer to have been honoured as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stuart Hancock</span> British composer (b. 1975)

Stuart Hancock is a British composer of film, TV and concert music. Hancock is known for having composed the original soundtracks to series 2 of the BBC fantasy series Atlantis, the animated TV adaptation of We're Going On A Bear Hunt and the Netflix comedy horror Crazyhead. He won the BASCA British Composer Award in 2015 for his community song-cycle, Snapshot Songs.

Randy Klein is an American musician, composer, pianist, author, and educator.

Scott Elder Harper is an American composer, arranger and musician for motion picture and television scores and orchestra, as well as a multi-instrumentalist, conductor, and session-player for pop music. With a background in popular music, Harper has composed theater pieces, oratorios, orchestral chamber works, and dynamic and diverse ensemble arrangements with various instrumental combinations for popular recording artists and film scores alike. His work includes conducting and album arrangements for Celine Dion, Cher, and Olivia Newton-John. He has performed on multiple original motion picture soundtracks, such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) — scored by John Williams — and The Right Stuff (1983), by Bill Conti, as a double bass player in the Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra. He has also composed several original scores for documentary feature films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rick Baitz</span> American composer

Richard Keith Baitz is an American composer, born in 1954. His work incorporates elements of classical, jazz, electronic and world music, and has been extensively utilized for film, television, theatre, dance and the concert stage. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and Columbia College Chicago, and is founding director of BMI’s "Composing for the Screen" workshop in New York City.

References

  1. "Michael J. McEvoy, multi-instrumentalist and composer: Something Else! Interview". October 23, 2015.
    - "Michael J McEvoy - MusicBrainz".
  2. "The Battle of Hood and Bismarck". DocuWiki. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  3. https://emmynashville.org/files/2013/05/Emmy-Winners-1-31.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  4. "Sir Arthur Bliss Memorial Scholar" . Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  5. "The Ivors Composer Awards 2019 Nominations Announced" (PDF). IVORS Academy (Press release). October 28, 2019.