Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman's music thrives on motoric pulse, clear harmony and borrowed baroque material, heard in film scores from the Greenaway years to The Piano and in works written for his own amplified band.
He shaped that sound with the Michael Nyman Band: string quartet, saxophones, brass, bass guitar and piano, built to cut through at high volume. Operas, string quartets, concertos and song cycles share the film writing's taste for tightly patterned figures drawn from Purcell, Mozart, Dowland and other early sources. The attack and texture began, in his telling, with playing a Mozart aria in the style of Jerry Lee Lewis. Concert pieces such as Tango for Tim carry the same rhythmic bite away from the screen.
Compositions by Michael Nyman appear on
Chinese Whispers and other contemporary dance music
Piano works by leading contemporary composers from Australia and China, played by Gabriella Smart. The programme ranges across prepared piano, film-related pieces and dance-inspired solos by Griswold, Tan Dun, Curran, Jia Daqun, Nyman and others.
Australian Monody
The Marais Project is joined by countertenor Russell Harcourt for a collection of largely Australian songs and instrumental works, spanning light and darkness, love and loss.