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.
Sir Karl William Pamp Jenkins,, HonFLSW is a Welsh multi-instrumentalist and composer. His best known works include the song "Adiemus" and the Adiemus album series; Palladio; The Armed Man; and his Requiem.
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 Originally made up of old instruments such as rebecs, sackbuts and shawms alongside more modern instruments like the banjo and saxophone to produce as loud a sound as possible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.
Michael Nyman is the third album release by Michael Nyman and the second with the Michael Nyman Band, having previously contributed tracks to new music compilations. Most of the music was material from early films by Peter Greenaway such as "Bird List Song" from The Falls, sung by Lucie Skeaping, and music from Act of God and Tree.
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.
Paul Mealor CStJ CLJ OSS FRSA is a Welsh composer. A large proportion of his output is for chorus, both a cappella and accompanied. He came to wider notice when his motet Ubi Caritas et Amor was performed at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011. He later composed the song "Wherever You Are", which became the 2011 Christmas number one in the UK Singles Chart. He has also composed two operas, four symphonies, concerti and chamber music.
Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs is a 1991 opera by Michael Nyman that began as an opera-ballet titled La Princesse de Milan choreographed by Karine Saporta. The libretto is William Shakespeare's The Tempest, as abridged by the composer. The title is derived from Caliban's line, "This isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, which give delight and hurt not." It premiered in June 1991 in Hérouville-Saint-Clair, Calvados, France, with the L'Ensemble de Basse-Normandie conducted by Dominique Debart. Three members of Saporta's dance company provided the singing.
Man and Boy: Dada is a 2003 opera by Michael Nyman on a libretto by Michael Hastings. It tells the story of a friendship between aging dada artist Kurt Schwitters and a twelve-year-old boy. These two characters and the boy's mother make up the cast of the opera.
'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.
The Kiss and Other Movements is the sixth album release by Michael Nyman, and the fifth recording with the Michael Nyman Band. The title track is an "operatic duet" between Dagmar Krause and Omar Ebrahim, based on a painting of the same title by Paul Richards, which is depicted on the cover, and used in a video art project by Richards of the same name. The album includes music from Peter Greenaway's Making a Splash and 26 Bathrooms, an excerpt of Nyman's unfinished opera, Tristram Shandy, and a concert piece, "Tango Between the Lines".
Time Will Pronounce: The 1992 Commissions is a 1993 album by Michael Nyman, his eighteenth release. Nyman does not perform on the album, but he composed all the music, produced it, and wrote the liner notes. The album contains four compositions. The album is dedicated to the memory of Tony Simons, "friend, manager, and generous and courageous survivor." The album is named for the second and longest of the four works, the only one featuring a former member of the Michael Nyman Band, Elisabeth Perry.
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.
Mozart 252 is a 2008 album by Michael Nyman with the Michael Nyman Band, Hilary Summers, and Andrew Slater, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth. Although "Revisiting the Don," one of only two newly written works on the album, was commissioned and performed in 2006, the album's title is a joke on its lateness as an album, released 252 years after Mozart's birth. The album also includes "In Re Don Giovanni," Nyman's first composition for the band, which is based on the first fifteen bars of "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" from Don Giovanni, six selections from Peter Greenaway's film, Drowning by Numbers, in which he was instructed to base the music on the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante K. 364, and two duets and an aria from Nyman's television opera, Letters, Riddles and Writs, in this recording featuring bass Andrew Slater as Leopold Mozart and contralto Hilary Summers as Wolfgang.
String Quartets 1–3 is a 1991 album by the Balanescu Quartet and the fifteenth release by Michael Nyman. It is the second album of his music on which he did not perform or conduct, though he does provide liner notes. String Quartet No. 3 is built out of Out of the Ruins and became a fixture in numerous Nyman film scores in the 1990s.
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.
Acts of Beauty • Exit no Exit is the 55th album by Michael Nyman, the eighth on his own label, and the third of these to consist entirely of previously unrecorded work. He does not perform on the album, but composed and produced it. Acts of Beauty is a song cycle with texts by various writers commenting on the nature of art and beauty. It is performed by Cristina Zavalloni and Sentieri Selvaggi, conducted by Carlo Boccadoro. Exit no Exit was originally a vocal work for John Motson called Beckham Crosses, Nyman Scores, in tribute to the English association football team. Here, the vocal part is rewritten for bass clarinet, and played by Andrew Sparling of the Michael Nyman Band with the Nyman Quartet: Gabrielle Lester, Catherine Thompson, Kate Musker, and Tony Hinnigan.
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.
The Libertine: Music for the Film by Laurence Dunmore is the album release of Michael Nyman's score for the 2004 film The Libertine directed by Laurence Dunmore. It is the third release on Nyman's own label, MN Records, and the first to receive distribution in the United States, by Inner Knot Records. It is his 50th album release overall. When Naxos Records began distributing MN Records in the United States in 2008, it was included and began appearing in large quantities in stores. This is Nyman's last score for a major motion picture to date, and his last soundtrack release, other than compilation soundtracks.
Simon Rackham is an English composer and artist. He is probably best known for his work;‘Which ever way your nose bends’ the first commission by the six piano ensemble Piano Circus, composed as a companion piece to Steve Reich’s ‘Six Pianos’ & released on their eponymous album by Argo Records (UK) in 1992.
A Boy Was Born, Op. 3, is a choral composition by Benjamin Britten. Subtitled Choral variations for men's, women's and boys' voices, unaccompanied , it was originally composed from 1932 to 1933. It was first performed on 23 February 1934 as a BBC broadcast. Britten revised the work in 1955. The composer set different texts related to Christmas to music as theme and variations, scored for an a cappella choir with boys' voices.
