— The Oxonian Review
For just over forty years, the music of Michael Nyman has been performed all over the world, reaching audiences of all tastes and demographics through the concert hall, theater, and cinema. Nyman is undoubtedly one of the UK's most innovative, celebrated, and globally performed composers. His reputation is built upon a substantial body of work written for a wide variety of ensembles, not only for his own band, but also for symphony orchestra, choir, and string quartet.
His contribution to music for the classical concert hall and stage is significant and varied. It is music clearly of the classical tradition, as seen in the ongoing cycle of symphonies, but it is also music of its time, at once both vibrantly rhythmic, harmonically grounded, and melodically memorable. This, combined with Nyman's aesthetic, which always acknowledges the sources for his musical material, creates a sound world that is unique and always rewards exploration.
Nyman celebrated his 75th birthday on March 23 2019.
In Art & Fashion
Most recently in New York Nyman's music was showcased within the Metropolitan Museum's Heavenly Bodies exhibit enhancing the theatricality of the exhibit with Time Lapse and The Draughtman's Contract.
In Cinema
Nyman's relished scores for cinema include Jane Campion's The Piano, Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and Drowning by Numbers, Andrew Niccol's Gattaca. and the striking documentary celebrating designer icon Alexander McQueen.
In Dance
In 2018 Jiří Bubeníček drew on the brilliance of Campion's film and created a full-length production of The Piano for Royal New Zealand Ballet. Originally conceived as a short work for Dortmund Ballet, Bubeníček imagined and expanded the ballet fro RNZB, giving Ada's story a new and distinctively New Zealand voice and a powerful new means of expression. Excerpts from Michael Nyman's iconic film score are blended with evocative music by Claude Debussy, Anton Arensky, Igor Stravinsky, Alfred Schnittke, Johannes Brahms, and Dmitri Shostakovich.
New York City Ballet's ballerina Lauren Lovette created Not our Fate for the NYCB's 2017 Fall Fashion Gala set to three movements from Concert Suite from Prospero's Books. The creation featured costumes by Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim of MONSE and Oscar de la Renta.
DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse (the music is also known as MGV: Musique à Grande Vitesse) was commissioned by the 1993 Festival de Lille to celebrate the inauguration of the Paris-Lille TGV Service. MGV runs continuously but was conceived as five interconnected, abstract, imaginary journeys; each ending with a slow, mainly stepwise melody distilled to its true form in each movement's final bars. The supercharged, minimalist score served as the foundation for Christopher Wheeldon's ballet created on London's Royal Ballet which propels a jet train of 26 dancers in sleek costumes and scenery (by Jean-Marc Puissant) through surging, relentless movement in front of a structural metallic background. The production is in the repertoire of the Australian Ballet and Pennsylvania Ballet; it returns to New York City Ballet's repertoire this month and again during their Winter Season in March 2020.
Tickets
September 18, 22, 24
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, NY 10023
