News
Nyman String Quartet No. 5 premiere
On November 20, The Smith Quartet will perform the premiere of String Quartet No 5 by Michael Nyman as part of the Festival Automne en Normandie in Bernay, Église abbatiale Notre-Dame. The string quartet, commissioned by the festival, forms part of a concert including Nyman’s String Quartet No 2 and String Quartet No 3 alongside Louis Andriessen Miserere.
Source: http://www.chesternovello.com/Default.aspx?TabId=2434&State_2912=2&newsId_2912=2352
New Andy Findon release features five Nyman works
Andy Findon’s new release Density 21.5, a collection of unaccompanied works for flute (and other instruments) by contemporary British composers, features five Michael Nyman compositions. One of them, an early work called “Canzona”, has never been recorded for release before.
Full details here. The album is currently only available for digital download.
A welcome reissue of Michael Nyman's almost-grand opera | Gramophone
First performed in Spain in 2000 then extensively revised for a second “premiere” in Karlsruhe in 2002, Facing Goya still ranks as Nyman’s most ambitious operatic work to date. Divided into four acts, lasting well over two hours, featuring five singers and scored for a large ensemble (effectively an expanded version of the Michael Nyman Band), it comes close to “grand” opera in design, which perhaps explains why the work has been overshadowed by the composer’s more approachable chamber operas.
Composer Michael Nyman settles an old score | The Independent
It’s an irony not lost on Michael Nyman. His score to a film that helped define the communist USSR will ring out in front of Moscow’s new capitalist elite. “I’m sure that contemporary Russians will find this film quaint and totally incomprehensible,” he half-jokes.
Variously translated from Russian as One Sixth of the World, or sometimes A Sixth Part of the World, the film in question is a barnstorming state-of-the-nation documentary intended to gel the far-flung peoples of the young nation together into one tight revolutionary pack. This September the composer will be performing his soundtrack to the film inside Russia for the first time at the Barvikha Concert Hall in Moscow.
A Sixth Part of the World was made in 1926 by director David Kaufmann – who worked under the pseudonym Dziga Vertov – and depicts everything from steel mills to folk dance.
“I first worked on Vertov with my score for Man With a Movie Camera,” explains Nyman. “Then I scored his film The Eleventh Year. The Austrian Film Foundation told me they intended to release a DVD with both The Eleventh Year and A Sixth Part of the World. I pointed out that it would seem odd to have one film with a soundtrack and the other without. So I composed the soundtrack for A Sixth Part of the World.”
Meanwhile, Nyman reveals that he has yet another Russian epic in his sights. He is working on “a new score for Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin,” he says.
-By Chris Beanland, The Independent
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/composer-michael-nyman-settles-an-old-score-2313618.html
Long Beach Opera to present works by Michael Nyman, Osvaldo Golijov | LA Times
Long Beach Opera has long specialized in edgy, adventurous pieces that major houses tend to shy away from. On Wednesday, the small company announced that its new season will include productions of operas by Michael Nyman, Francis Poulenc, Bohuslav Martinu and more. It will also feature Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar,” which the company postponed in 2007 due to budget problems.
The 2012 season will comprise four individual productions, including a double bill. Performances will take place at venues around Long Beach and San Pedro…
...Nyman’s “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” (June 16 and 24[2012]) is a 1986 opera based on the book by Oliver Sacks that includes the true story of a man suffering from a strange neurological condition. Performances will take place at the EXPO Building in Long Beach. As a composer, Nyman has become famous for his scores for movies including “The Piano,” “Gattaca” and “The End of the Affair,” as well as for films by Peter Greenaway.
—David Ng, LA Times
Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/07/long-beach-opera-to-present-works-by-michael-nyman-osvaldo-golijov.html