Michael Nyman - Composer, Strange Attractors, Part I (1999)

Nyman has worked as a musicologist and music critic and published his study Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond in 1974 (second edition 1999.) Besides regular touring work with the Michael Nyman Band, he has written concert works including five concertos and four string quartets, operas (including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) and pieces to accompany dance. Nyman has written dozens of film scores for directors as diverse as Peter Greenaway, Jane Campion, and Volker Schlondorff, music for a catwalk fashion show (Yamamoto Perpetuo for Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto), the opening of high-speed rail link (MGV, 1993) and a computer game (Enemy Zero). His recent commissions have included Cycle for Disquietude for Expo '98 in Lisbon , Strong on Oaks for the English Sinfonia and a suite from Drowning by Numbers for the London Mozart Players. Recent soundtracks (since The Piano) include Gattaca (directed by Andrew Niccol), Ravenous (directed by Antonia Bird), Wonderland (directed by Michael Winterbottom) and The End of the Affair (directed by Neil Jordan). Nyman is currently working on an opera, Facing Goya , to be premiered in Santiago de Compostella in August 2000.