WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK

Michael Nyman

Michael Nyman (London, United Kingdom, 1944) graduated from the Royal Academy of Music and King’s College in London. After spending some time studying Romanian folk music he made a name for himself as a music critic, using the term “minimalism” for the first time with reference to music in 1968. In 1976, he created the first nucleus of what is today the Michael Nyman Band, for which he has written a large portion of his music. During the ‘70s he worked closely with the director Peter Greenaway; this collaboration generated a total of eleven films, including The Draughtsman’s Contract  (1982), Drowning by Numbers (1988) and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989). In 1993, the great success of his soundtrack to Jane Campion’s film The Piano led to collaborations with other directors, such as Andrew Niccol for Gattaca (1997), Neil Jordan for The End of the Affair (1999) and Michael Winterbottom for Wonderland (1999) and The Claim (2000). In 2008, he published his volume of photographs Sublime and the next year his first English exhibit was held at the De La Warr Pavillion at Bexhill-on-Sea, at which he presented Videofile, a selection of his video works and photographs. He has also worked with numerous musicians, including Bruce McLean, Mary Kelly, Carsten Nicolai, Kultlug Ataman and Damon Albarn, with whom he wrote the music to the film by Antonia Bird, Ravenouse (1999). He wrote the soundtrack to Man on Wire, which won an Oscar in 2009 as Best Documentary. His visual works have been exhibited in various galleries, including the Tate Modern in London, the Reina Sophia in Madrid and the MoMA in New York.