Peter Greenaway, is a British film director, screenwriter and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Mannerism painting in particular. Common traits in his films are the scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.
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 Michael John Gambon was an Irish-English actor. Gambon started his acting career with Laurence Olivier as one of the original members of the Royal National Theatre. Over his six-decade-long career, he received three Olivier Awards and four BAFTA TV Awards. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama.
Tampopo is a 1985 Japanese comedy film written and directed by Juzo Itami, and starring Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto, Kōji Yakusho, and Ken Watanabe. The publicity for the film calls it the first "ramen Western", a play on the term spaghetti Western.
Drowning by Numbers is a 1988 British-Dutch film directed by Peter Greenaway. It won the award for Best Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival of 1988.
The Draughtsman's Contract is a 1982 British period comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Greenaway – his first conventional feature film. Originally produced for Channel 4, the film is a form of murder mystery, set in rural Wiltshire, England in 1694. The period setting is reflected in Michael Nyman's score, which borrows widely from Henry Purcell, and in the extensive and elaborate costume designs. The action was shot on location in the house and formal gardens of Groombridge Place. The film received the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a 1986 American independent psychological horror crime film directed and co-written by John McNaughton about the random crime spree of a serial killer who seemingly operates with impunity. It stars Michael Rooker in his debut as the nomadic killer Henry, Tom Towles as Otis, a prison buddy with whom Henry is living, and Tracy Arnold as Becky, Otis's sister. The characters of Henry and Otis are loosely based on convicted real life serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.
Prospero's Books is a 1991 British avant-garde film adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, written and directed by Peter Greenaway. Sir John Gielgud plays Prospero, the protagonist who provides the off-screen narration and the voices to the other story characters. As noted by Peter Conrad in The New York Times on 17 November 1991, Greenaway intended the film “as an homage to the actor and to his 'mastery of illusion.' In the film, Prospero is Shakespeare, and having rehearsed the action inside his head, speaking the lines of all the other characters, he concludes the film by sitting down to write The Tempest.”
Sacha Vierny was a French cinematographer. He was born in Bois-le-Roi, Seine-et-Marne, Île-de-France, France, and died in Paris, France, at the age of 81. He is most famous for his work with Alain Resnais – especially for the two films Hiroshima mon amour and L'année dernière à Marienbad – and with Peter Greenaway.
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.
Anthony Hinnigan is a musician from Glasgow. He is best known for his work with Michael Nyman, Ennio Morricone, and James Horner. He plays cello as well as Irish whistle and various Andean woodwind instruments. Due to frequent misspellings of his surname, he is sometimes mistakenly reported as two different musicians due to the diversity of the instruments he plays.
Roger Ashton-Griffiths is an English character actor, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his role as Mace Tyrell in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones.
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.
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."
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.
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.
The Composer's Cut Series Vol. II: Nyman/Greenaway Revisited is the second in a series of albums, all released on the same day, by Michael Nyman to feature concert versions of film scores, in this case, films of Peter Greenaway, and his 52nd release overall. The album is similar to The Essential Michael Nyman Band, although a number of tracks are on only one album or the other. In spite of being recorded in 1992, with the same lineup, Memorial is not the same performance as the one that appears on The Essential Michael Nyman Band or After Extra Time, which was recorded in Tokyo. This performance was recorded in London and is slightly less aggressively performed.
Hywel Williams-Ellis, sometimes billed as Hywel Williams Ellis, is a British actor who was active in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616 refers to the first of several large schutterstukken painted by the Dutch painter Frans Hals for the St. George civic guard of Haarlem, and today is considered one of the main attractions of the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem.
