Michael Nyman

Birth : 1944-03-23, Stratford, London, England, UK

History

Michael Nyman is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for numerous film scores (many written during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway) and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano.

Movies

McQueen
Music
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
The Black Legend of Mexican Cinema
Music
During 1950, Miguel Contreras Torres led a group of filmmakers to officially denounce William O. Jenkins' monopoly on film theaters, which was built throughout the country upon crime and corruption. Ever since, Uncle Miguel was ridiculed and eventually forgotten, but it is certain that his proclaim announced the separation of Mexican cinema and its audience. Discoveries may be found in the films made by Miguel, and bringing back to life these moving pictures might recover this history that was never told, a story that is almost lost and that Contreras Torres himself tried to pass on through his writings in The Black Book of Mexican Cinema.
The Man Who Saw Too Much
A film about fragility; about a man obsessed with photographing the accident who discovered that the fate of others was his way of connecting to life. When does the image of the accident become the object of desire? Following the footsteps of Metinides and the work of contemporary tabloid photographers, we discover Mexico City through a narrative of crime scenes and accidents; rubbernecking though Metinides’ Gaze.
Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words
Original Music Composer
A personal and captivating account of the extraordinary life and work of Ingrid Bergman (1915-82), a young Swedish woman who became one of the most celebrated actresses in world cinema.
War Work: 8 Songs with Film
Director
A song cycle combining texts written by World War I poets, most all of whom lost their lives during the war, chansons vieilles from European poets, archival visual excerpts, and fragments of musical motifs evoking the unknown soldiers: those who have never been found or have lost their lives.
Go Right
Music
a short film by @RockyPlanetesimal.
NYman with a Movie Camera
Is as much a celebration of the world as its inspiration, Dziga Vertov's silent masterpiece, "Man With a Movie Camera," celebrates Soviet society. Having written a thrilling 2002 score accompanying screenings of Vertov's monumental film, as well as the British Film Institute's DVD release, Nyman exploits his considerable acquaintance with the work to create a similarly giddy montage with editor Max Pugh, this time shot on video over the past two decades.
NYman with a Movie Camera
Director
Is as much a celebration of the world as its inspiration, Dziga Vertov's silent masterpiece, "Man With a Movie Camera," celebrates Soviet society. Having written a thrilling 2002 score accompanying screenings of Vertov's monumental film, as well as the British Film Institute's DVD release, Nyman exploits his considerable acquaintance with the work to create a similarly giddy montage with editor Max Pugh, this time shot on video over the past two decades.
2 Graves
Original Music Composer
A lone man avenges the death of his father.
Man on Wire
Music
On August 7th 1974, French tightrope walker Philippe Petit stepped out on a high wire, illegally rigged between New York's World Trade Center twin towers, then the world's tallest buildings. After nearly an hour of performing on the wire, 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan, he was arrested. This fun and spellbinding documentary chronicles Philippe Petit's "highest" achievement.
Never Forever
Original Music Composer
When an American woman begins a dangerous relationship with an attractive immigrant worker, in order to save her marriage, she finds her true self.
Theresa: The Body of Christ
Music
In the 16th century, the daughter of a Spanish nobleman joins a convent and becomes a spiritual leader.
The Libertine
Original Music Composer
The story of John Wilmot, a.k.a. the Earl of Rochester, a 17th century poet who famously drank and debauched his way to an early grave, only to earn posthumous critical acclaim for his life's work.
9 Songs
Himself (uncredited)
Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.
Nathalie...
Original Music Composer
Paris doctor Catherine starts to think her husband, Bernard, is having an affair when she hears an unfamiliar woman's message on his voice mail. Hoping to learn more about his extramarital activities, Catherine heads to a strip club, where she hires call girl Nathalie to have a fling with Gerard. As the affair progresses, Nathalie gives Catherine regular status reports, and the relationship between the women evolves from business to personal.
The Actors
Music
During the run of a particularly awful interpretation of Richard III, the star, Anthony O'Malley, begins to frequent a rough pub to develop his character. He meets Barreller who he discovers owes someone he's never met a considerable sum of money. Seeing an opportunity to make some fast money, O'Malley convinces hapless extra, Tom, to meet Barreller as the debt collector.
Surrealissimo: The Trial of Salvador Dali
The Pianist
A comic drama about the weird and wonderful world of Salvador Dali and the Surrealists. This film charts Dali's meteoric rise from obscurity to the world's most publicised artist.
The Claim
Music
A prospector sells his wife and daughter to another gold miner for the rights to a gold mine. Twenty years later, the prospector is a wealthy man who owns much of the old west town named Kingdom Come. But changes are brewing and his past is coming back to haunt him. A surveyor and his crew scouts the town as a location for a new railroad line and a young woman suddenly appears in the town and is evidently the man's daughter.
I Sold My Cadillac to Diana Dors: The Edmundo Ros Story
Director
Engaging profile of legendary band leader, Edmundo Ros, who brought Latin American music to England in the 1930's. In the 1940's & 50's he became a household name as presenter of Housewives Choice on BBC radio and the darling of high society as owner of a prestigious nightclub on Regent Street.
I Sold My Cadillac to Diana Dors: The Edmundo Ros Story
Himself - Presenter
Engaging profile of legendary band leader, Edmundo Ros, who brought Latin American music to England in the 1930's. In the 1940's & 50's he became a household name as presenter of Housewives Choice on BBC radio and the darling of high society as owner of a prestigious nightclub on Regent Street.
Act Without Words I
Music
A hot, thirsty man in the desert is tormented when the things he needs drop from the sky only to disappear again or hover out of his reach.
Nabbie's Love
Music
Nanako returns to her hometown on the tiny island of Aguni to meet her grandmother Nabbie. However, when Nanako's ferry arrives, it is also carrying Nabbie's former lover, who has returned to Aguni after a long absence.
The End of the Affair
Original Music Composer
On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed.
Wonderland
Original Music Composer
There's little wonder in the working-class lives of Bill, Eileen, and their three grown daughters. They're lonely Londoners. Nadia, a cafe waitress, places personal ads, looking for love; Debbie, a single mom, entertains men at the hair salon after hours; her son spends part of the weekend with her ex, a man with a hair-trigger temper. Molly is expecting her first baby and its father acts as if the responsibility is too much for him.
Ravenous
Music
Upon receiving reports of missing persons at Fort Spencer, a remote Army outpost on the Western frontier, Capt. John Boyd investigates. After arriving at his new post, Boyd and his regiment aid a wounded frontiersman who recounts a horrifying tale of a wagon train murdered by its supposed guide -- a vicious U.S. Army colonel gone rogue. Fearing the worst, the regiment heads out into the wilderness to verify the gruesome claims.
Gattaca
Original Music Composer
In a future society in the era of indefinite eugenics, humans are set on a life course depending on their DNA. Young Vincent Freeman is born with a condition that would prevent him from space travel, yet is determined to infiltrate the GATTACA space program.
The Ogre
Original Music Composer
Frenchman Abel Tiffauges is a naive man who lives a simple life working as a mechanic. Falsely accused of being a child abuser, he is recruited as a soldier when World War II begins, but is captured soon and taken to the heart of Nazi Germany.
The Diary of Anne Frank
Original Music Composer
This is the true story of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl living in Amsterdam during WW2. Anne's father realizes on time the danger the Jews face and hides his family (his wife Edith and his two daughters Margo (16) and Anne (13), along with four more people, in "the house behind". For two years the 8 people live in darkness and whispers, in fear of being discovered and sent to the German crematories. During that time young Anne writes a diary, describing her daily life in the cellar, her complicated relationship with her mother and the story of her first love - Peter, the young boy in the hiding place. Anne writes down her wishes to run out free and breath the air and flowers, her dreams to be free at last. But humanity is often a cruel mistress...
Carrington
Music
Painter Dora Carrington develops an intimate but extremely complex bond with writer Lytton Strachey. Though Lytton is a homosexual, he is enchanted by the mysterious Dora and they begin a lifelong friendship that has strangely romantic undertones. Eventually, Lytton and Dora decide to live together, despite the fact that the latter has fallen in love with military man Ralph Partridge, whom she plans to marry.
6 Days, 6 Nights
Original Music Composer
Alice is a promising young artist in Paris. Her boyfriend Franck, a boxer, has just moved in to her attic flat. Then her sister Elsa, a bored housewife, leaves her unfaithful husband Thomas and turns up unannounced to stay with Alice and Franck. Elsa disrupts their life by playing psychological games with them, but they cannot bring themselves to throw her out.
Mesmer
Original Music Composer
A biography of the eighteenth century Viennese physician, Franz Anton Mesmer, who used unorthodox healing practices based on his theory of "animal magnetism."
The Piano
Original Music Composer
After a long voyage from Scotland, pianist Ada McGrath and her young daughter, Flora, are left with all their belongings, including a piano, on a New Zealand beach. Ada, who has been mute since childhood, has been sold into marriage to a local man named Alisdair Stewart. Making little attempt to warm up to Alisdair, Ada soon becomes intrigued by his Maori-friendly acquaintance, George Baines, leading to tense, life-altering conflicts.
The Michael Nyman Songbook
Original Music Composer
Ute Lemper sings a collection of art songs by Michael Nyman based on texts by Paul Celan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud. It was filmed at the Musikhalle, Hamburg, 4 February 1992.
Prospero's Books
Original Music Composer
An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of the 'The Tempest'.
Not Mozart: Letters, Riddles and Writs
Original Music Composer
Letters, Riddles and Writs is a one act opera for television by Michael Nyman broadcast in 1991.
The Hairdresser's Husband
Original Music Composer
The film begins in a flashback from the titular character, Antoine. We are introduced to his fixation with female hairdressers which began at a young age. The film uses flashbacks throughout and there are frequent parallels drawn with the past. We are unsure what Antoine has done with his life, however we know he has fulfilled his childhood ambition, to marry a haidresser.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
Original Music Composer
The wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husband's restaurant.
Monsieur Hire
Original Music Composer
A French man spies on a lovely younger woman across the way. When he's spotted by the woman shortly after being questioned by the police about a local murder, the man's simple life becomes more complicated.
Hubert Bals Handshake
Music
Peter Greenaway remembers his first meeting with Rotterdam Film Festival director Hubert Bals.
Drowning by Numbers
Original Music Composer
Three related women, all named Cissie Colpitts share a solidarity for one another which brings about three copy-cat drownings. The local coroner is in love with all three women and helps to disguise the murders.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Music
Opera singer and professor Dr P is examined both in a clinic and in his home, as he suffers from a degeneration of the occipital lobe that allows him to see details but not wholes.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Adaptation
Opera singer and professor Dr P is examined both in a clinic and in his home, as he suffers from a degeneration of the occipital lobe that allows him to see details but not wholes.
The Disputation
Music
In 1263, King James I of Aragon organizes a debate between representatives of Judaism and Christianity regarding whether or not Jesus was the Messiah.
A Zed & Two Noughts
Original Music Composer
Twin zoologists lose their wives in a car accident and become obsessed with decomposing animals.
Making a Splash
Music
Film which explores the relationship of man to water, his mastery of the fear of drowning and accomplishments in swimming.
The Cold Room
Original Music Composer
A girl visiting modern day East Germany with her estranged father begins reliving the horrifying events that happened to a young girl living there during World War II.
The Sea in Their Blood
Music
A film made for the Central Office of Information concerning Britain's coastline, with music by Michael Nyman.
Nelly's Version
Original Music Composer
People claim to know an amnesiac who finds herself in a hotel with a suitcase full of cash.
The Draughtsman's Contract
Original Music Composer
A young artist is commissioned by the wife of a wealthy landowner to make a series of drawings of the estate while her husband is away.
Zandra Rhodes
Music
Commissioned by the COI, Peter Greenaway made a biographical short film about fashion designer Zandra Rhodes.
The Pledge
Music
Three criminals pledge to free the soul of their friend from his gibbeted corpse in this short film based on 'The Highwayman' by Lord Dunsany.
The Falls
Music
The exploration of the effects of an unexpected catastrophe, known as VUE (violent unknown event) through the bios of 92 survivors.
Act of God
Music
Documentary film by Peter Greenaway made for Thames Television, in which people who have survived being struck by lightning relate their experiences against a typically Greenaway backdrop of lists, black humour and 'collated statistics'.
A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist
Original Music Composer
An anonymous narrator outlines a bizarre journey taken through "H", aided by a series of extraordinary maps, and his previous dealings with the mysterious Tulse Luper and the keeper of the bird house at the Amsterdam Zoo.
Vertical Features Remake
Original Music Composer
Vertical Features Remake is a film by Peter Greenaway. It portrays the work of a fictional Institute of Reclamation and Restoration as they attempt to assemble raw footage taken by ornithologist Tulse Luper into a short film, in accordance with his notes and structuralist film theory. The footage consists mostly of vertical landscape features, such as trees and posts, shot in the English landscape.
Keep It Up Downstairs
Music
The year is 1904; the setting is Cockshute Towers, one of England's stateliest homes. When the household is threatened with bankruptcy, both the masters and the servants are prepared to co-operate in trying to find some cash - after all, most of them are enjoying liaisons of one kind or another among themselves, and none have any desire to give up their rewarding way of life...
1-100
Music
A short film by Peter Greenaway.
Goole by Numbers
Music
A numerical journey through the quaint village of Goole.