Press Coverage
Michael Nyman's "Collections" | Sequenza 21 review
English composer Michael Nyman is best known to lay audiences as the composer of the score to Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano. Extraordinarily prolific in both film scores and concert music (principally for his own ensembles, the Michael Nyman Band and Orchestra), Nyman released three albums on his label, MN Records, in 2010. This album, Collections: Film Music Photography, features a DVD of a short film shot by Nyman, 50000 Photos Can’t Be Wrong, a booklet of his photography titled Cine Opera, and a CD retrospective, Portrait of a Label. The film and photography are visually striking (and the film contains music not found on the disc), but I will focus on the CD in this review.
Vertov Sounds review | Jeff Simon | Buffalo News
The great Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov was one of the pioneer film theorists in the silent film era. Composer and wickedly astute former music critic Michael Nyman is famous as the first to apply the fine arts term “minimalist” to music. They meet on this disc, on the music that Nyman wrote as soundtrack music for Vertov’s films “A Sixth Part of the World” (1926) and “The Eleventh Year” (1928). It all stems from a cup of tea Nyman had with a representative from the Austrian Film Museum wherein Nyman was challenged to write music for the two films Vertov…