The Michael Nyman Orchestra | |
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| Origin | London, England |
| Genres | contemporary classical music film scores |
| Years active | 1993-present |
| Labels | Piano EMI/Virgin/Venture/Caroline Editions EG Jay Argo SLC Warner Bros. MN Music |
The Michael Nyman Orchestra is a group that expands on the Michael Nyman Band for specific album work, often for movie soundtracks.
In 1993, the Michael Nyman Band joined an orchestra for the first time in their recording history with MGV: Musique à Grand Vitesse . The album credit is to "The Michael Nyman Band and Orchestra".
The Michael Nyman Orchestra has operated as a formal group since then. Such soundtrack albums as Practical Magic , Ravenous , The End of the Affair , The Claim , and The Libertine are credited to this Orchestra. While the former two titles lack detailed credits, the latter three albums show that most of the Orchestra has remained consistent.
From the 2000 soundtrack album The Claim.
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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.
Man with a Movie Camera is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, and edited by Vertov's wife Yelizaveta Svilova. Kaufman also appears as the eponymous Man of the film.
A Zed & Two Noughts is a 1985 film written and directed by Peter Greenaway. This film was Greenaway's first collaboration with cinematographer Sacha Vierny, who went on to shoot virtually all of Greenaway's work in the 1980s and 1990s, until Vierny's death. Greenaway referred to Vierny as his "most important collaborator". The film deals with twin zoologists who, after losing both their wives in a car accident, develop an obsession with animal decomposition.
David Lee is currently solo horn with the Michael Nyman Band. He has held principal positions with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Opera House Orchestra.
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 lineup has been variously altered and augmented for some works.
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.
Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds is a piece of minimalist music from the soundtrack for The Draughtsman's Contract, written by Michael Nyman. In the forty years since its release it has been much quoted and sampled and performed by various ensembles. It is based on the Prelude to Act III, Scene 2 of Henry Purcell’s opera, King Arthur.
Memorial is an epic funeral march-like piece, composed by Michael Nyman around 1984–1985. The work premiered on 15 June 1985. It was written to commemorate the deaths of 39 fans, almost all Italian, at the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus at the Heysel Stadium. The whole piece was performed just once. In 1989, Nyman began "reassigning" elements of Memorial, as he often does with earlier work. The first appearance on a commercial recording was of the fifth movement, on the soundtrack of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. The piece incorporates and builds on a musical sequence from "What Power Art Thou”, an aria from the opera King Arthur by Henry Purcell.
Tristram Shandy is an unfinished opera project by Michael Nyman based on his favorite novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne, begun in 1981. The project has been perpetually on hold for want of a commission, but at least five excerpts of the opera have been performed publicly, and one has been released on a commercial recording.
'The Masterwork' Award Winning Fish-Knife is a 1979 performance sculpture by Paul Richards and Bruce McLean with music by Michael Nyman. The companion album is the second release by Michael Nyman and the first release including the Michael Nyman Band. It was released by Audio Arts magazine only on audiocassette, initially in a limited edition of 300 copies, although many more were produced which have the number boxes blank.
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.
After Extra Time is a 1996 album by Michael Nyman with the Michael Nyman Band containing three tributes to Nyman's fandom of Association football: After Extra Time, the soundtrack to The Final Score, and Memorial. The latter is described as a remix, but is simply the 1992 recording from The Essential Michael Nyman Band. It was included in order to put it together with his two other football-inspired works. The album lists only three tracks, which has caused it to be erroneously reported that Memorial is track 3 and the others are all hidden tracks, but Memorial is track 26. Therefore, a track listing, as the individual portions of the pieces are not named, is not useful. The three pieces were recorded at separate times and thus have separate personnel lists.
The Composer's Cut Series Vol. I: The Draughtsman's Contract is the 51st album by Michael Nyman, recorded in 2005 with the Michael Nyman Band and released in 2006. It is the first in an unprecedented series in which Nyman began rerecording some of his film music independently of the needs of film production, and the culmination and refinement of 23 years of performances of the work since the recording of the original 1982 recording of The Draughtsman's Contract.
The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover is the twelfth album release by Michael Nyman and the ninth to feature the Michael Nyman Band. It is the soundtrack to the eponymous film by Peter Greenaway. The album includes the first commercially released recording of Memorial, and this is the only piece discussed in the liner notes, to the point that the lyric sheet for "Miserere", the song which Pup the kitchen boy sings, is misidentified "Memorial." "Book Depository" is one of Nyman's many waltzes.
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.
Alexander Bălănescu is a Romanian violinist, and founder of the Balanescu Quartet.
The Very Best of Michael Nyman: Film Music 1980–2001 is a compilation album film music by Michael Nyman. It was released on November 6, 2001 by Virgin Records. It including three previously unreleased tracks and one from the limited release, La Traversée de Paris. Some tracks are from the original soundtracks, while others are from pre-existing rerecordings such as The Essential Michael Nyman Band and Live.
Wonderland is the 38th album release by British composer Michael Nyman and the soundtrack to the 1999 film Wonderland. It is the first of many collaborations of Nyman with director Michael Winterbottom. For Winterbottom, Nyman would later perform excerpts of this score in 9 Songs, provide a score for The Claim, and arrangements and re-used tracks for A Cock and Bull Story. Nyman's daughter, Molly, has continued the family working relationship with Winterbottom, scoring The Road to Guantanamo with Harry Escott.
Ravenous is the score for the film of the same name. It was written and performed by Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman. The score was actually not a collaboration, according to Nyman: "Ravenous was a joint composition in the sense that Damon Albarn composed 60% of the tracks and I did the rest." It features Nyman's first writing for banjo since his 1981 self-titled album.
Gabrielle Lester is an English classical violinist and orchestra leader. She maintains an extensive discography of classical, popular and soundtrack recordings.
