This pdf was last updated: Apr/23/2010. Michael Nyman
Celebrated for his modular, repetitive style, minimalist composer Michael Nyman is among experimental music's most high-profile proponents,
Line-up Michael Nyman - piano Gabrielle Lester - violin Anne Morfee - violin Catherine Musker - viola Anthony Hinnigan - cello David Roach - saxophones Simon Haram - saxophones Andrew Findon - saxophone, flute Steve Sidwell - trumpet David Lee - horn Nigel Barr - bass trombone, euphonium Martin Elliott - bass guitar
On Stage: 12 Travel Party: 14
Website www.michaelnyman.com
Biography When Michael Nyman published his study Experimental Music: John Cage and Beyond (1974), he could hardly have foreseen his own contribution to that "beyond". Rejecting the orthodoxies of British modernism, Nyman had abandoned composition in 1964, working instead as a musicologist, editing Purcell and Handel, and collecting folk music in Romania. Later he became a music critic, in which capacity he was the first to apply the word "minimalism" to music, in a 1968 review for the Spectator of Cornelius Cardew's The Great Digest. But soon a route back to composition was emerging. He wrote the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's 1969 "dramatic pastoral" Down by the Greenwood Side. In 1977, Birtwistle commissioned him to provide arrangements of 18th-century Venetian songs for the production of Carlo Goldoni's play Il Campiello. Thrilled by the results, Nyman kept the Campiello Band together, now propelled by his own piano-playing. Soon the band's line-up mutated. The Campiello Band became the amplified Michael Nyman Band with a string quartet, three saxophones, bass trombone, bass guitar and piano. The band has been the laboratory in which Nyman has formulated his aesthetic, its sound world shaping a compositional style built around strong melodies, flexible, assertive rhythms and precisely articulated ensemble playing. Besides concert-hall works, Nyman has written dozens of film scores for directors as diverse as Peter Greenaway, Jane Campion and Volker Schlöndorff. That acute sensitivity to occasion and context is enriched by a talent, shared with baroque composers, for refiguration: the 1995 Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings develops ideas previously encountered in The Convertibility of Lute Strings and Tango for Tim; the Third String Quartet lies behind the score for Christopher Hampton's 1996 movie Carrington. His latest project include the multi-video event "The Commissar vanishes" (1999), the opera "Facing Goya" (2000). At every turn Nyman has proved eminently practical. Not for him the ivory tower anguish of a tormented composer grappling with abstract systems. Rather he has consistently displayed an openness to collaboration, a spry sense of humour, a literate imagination and an instinctive ability to engage a highly diverse audience.
Discography 1976 Decay Music - Obscure Records 1977 English Experimental Music - Audio Arts Cassette 1979 Masterwork Samples - Audio Arts Cassette 1980 From Brussels With Love - Crepuscule 1980 Miniatures - Pipe Records 1981 The Forth Wall - Virgin 1981 Mozart - Crepuscule 1981 Michael Nyman - Piano Records Sheet 1982 The Draughtsman's Contract - Charisma 1985 The Kiss and Other Movements - Virgin 1985 A Zed and Two Noughts - Virgin 1987 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - CBS 1988 Drowning by Numbers - Virgin 1989 And Do They Do / Zoo Caprices - TER Classics 1989 Out of the Ruins - Silva Screen 1989 The Cook, the Thief and her Lover - Virgin 1989 The Nyman / Greenaway Soundtracks - Virgin 1989 La Traversée de Paris - Criterion 1991 String Quartet Nos. 1-3 - Argo 1991 Beyond Modernism - Takenaka 1991 Prospero's Books - Argo 1991 Songbook - Decca 1992 Saxophone Works - Argo 1992 The Hairdresser's Husband - SLC 1992 The Essential Michael Nyman Band - Argo 1992 The Piano - Virgin 1993 Time will Pronounce - Argo 1993 Contini / Interzone - New Tone 1993 The Contemporary Trumpet - Virgin 1993 Michael Nyman for Yohji Yamamoto - Consipio 1994 Taking a Line for a Second Walk - Work Music 1994 A La Folie (Six Days, Six Nights) - Virgin 1994 The Piano Concerto - Argo 1994 Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs - Argo 1994 Anohito No Waltz - Consipio 1994 Michael Nyman "live" - Virgin Venture 1995 The Piano Concerto and other Themes - Las Nuevas 1995 Plus que Tango - Auvidis 1995 Carrington - Argo 1995 First & Foremost - Argo 1995 Diary of Anne Frank - Virgin 1995 The Piano Concerto / On the Fiddle - Tring 1996 After Extra Time - Virgin 1996 The Ogre - Virgin Venture 1997 Concertos - EMI 1997 Gattaca - Virgin 1997 Enemy Zero - First Smile Entertainment 1997 Pick it Up - Monroe Street Music 1997 The Very Best of Michael Nyman - Argo 1997 The Cold Room - Silva Screen 1998 Duo Dilemme - Doron music 1998 FGL: De Granada a la Luna - Sombrarecords 1998 An Eye for a Difference - Tring 1998 Strong on Oaks, Strong on the Causes of Oaks - Carlton 1998 The Suit and the Photograph - EMI 1998 The Piano Concerto / Where the Bee Dances - Naxos 1999 Nyman & Greenaway - Polygram 1999 Art House Café - Silva Screen 1999 Miniatures 2 - Details forthcoming 1999 Michael Nyman Band Live in Concert - Virgin 1999 Wonderland - Virgin Venture 1999 Ravenous - EMI 1999 The Commissar Vanishes - Virgin Venture 2000 The End of the Affair - Sony 2001 The Claim - Virgin 2001 The Very Best of Michael Nyman - Virgin
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