Early life

Career

''A Disappearing Number'' was a devised piece conceived and directed by McBurney, taking as its inspiration the story of the collaboration between two of the 20th century's most remarkable pure mathematicians, the indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, and Cambridge don G. H. Hardy. It played at the Barbican in autumn 2008 and toured internationally. In February 2009 McBurney directed the Complicite production ''Shun-kin'', based on two texts by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. It was produced in London and Tokyo in 2010.

On a freelance basis, McBurney directed the following: ''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui'' and ''All My Sons'' (2008) (both in New York), and live comedy shows, including Lenny Henry's ''So Much Things To Say'' and ''French and Saunders Live in 2000''.

McBurney is an established screen actor: he played the recurring role of Cecil the choirmaster in ''The Vicar of Dibley'', CIA computer whiz Garland in ''Body of Lies'', Dr. Atticus Noyle in ''The Manchurian Candidate'' (2004), Stone in ''The Last King of Scotland'', the metrosexual husband Aaron in ''Friends with Money'', Fra Pavel in ''The Golden Compass'', Charles James Fox in ''The Duchess'', and Oliver Lacon in ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy''. He also wrote the story and was an executive producer for ''Mr. Bean's Holiday''.

He stars in the BBC comedy series ''Rev.'', where he plays Archdeacon Robert.

He provides the voice of Kreacher in ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1'' (2010).

Legacy and honours

References

External links

Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:English film actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:English people of American descent Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:English people of Irish descent Category:Shakespearean actors Category:English theatre directors Category:Laurence Olivier Award winners Category:People from Cambridge Category:Royal National Theatre Company members Category:Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire

Akira is the author of ‘Argeïphontes Lyre’, a software filtering application based on recombination and morphologies. He was a protégé of Tom Erbe while studying msuic at the California Institute of the Arts. He has collaborated with various musicians, including Björk, David Sylvian, Harold Budd, Nobukazu Takemura, Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers.

Albums

Collaborations

References

External links

Category:Living people Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:1966 births Category:American electronic musicians Category:Samadhi Sound artists

Harold Budd (born May 24, 1936) is an American ambient/avant-garde composer and poet. Born in Los Angeles, he was raised in the Mojave Desert, and was inspired at an early age by the humming tone caused by wind blown across telephone wires.

Education and academic career

"The road from my first colored graph piece in 1962 to my renunciation of composing in 1970 to my resurfacing as a composer in 1972 was a process of trying out an idea and when it was obviously successful abandoning it. The early graph piece was followed by the Rothko orchestra work, the pieces for ''Source Magazine'', the Feldman-derived chamber works, the pieces typed out or written in longhand, the out-and-out conceptual works among other things, and the model drone works (which include the sax and organ "Coeur d'Orr" and "The Oak of the Golden Dreams", the latter based on the Balinese "Slendro" scale which scale I used again 18 years later on "The Real Dream of Sails").

"In 1970 with the "Candy-Apple Revision" (unspecified D-flat major) and "Lirio" (solo gong "for a long duration") I realized I had minimalized myself out of a career. It had taken ten years to reduce my language to zero but I loved the process of seeing it occur and not knowing when the end would come. By then I had opted out of avant-garde music generally; it seemed self-congratulatory and risk-free and my solution as to what to do next was to do nothing, to stop completely."

"I resurfaced as an artist in 1972 with "Madrigals of the Rose Angel", the first of what would be a cycle of works under the collective title ''The Pavilion of Dreams''. ''Madrigals'' refused to accommodate or even acknowledge any issues in new music. The entire aesthetic was an existential prettiness; not the Platonic "to Kalon", but simply pretty: mindless, shallow and utterly devastating. Female chorus, harp and percussion seemed like a beautiful start. Its first performance was at a Franciscan church in California conducted by Daniel Lentz."

Composer and recording artist

Since then he has developed a style of ambient music. His two collaborations with Brian Eno, ''The Plateaux of Mirror'' and ''The Pearl'', established his trademark atmospheric piano style. On ''Lovely Thunder'' he introduced subtle electronic textures. His thematic 2000 release ''The Room'' saw a return to a more minimalist approach. In 2003, Daniel Lanois, the renowned producer of U2 and Bob Dylan, and occasional collaborator of Brian Eno, recorded an impromptu performance of Harold playing the piano in his Los Angeles living room, unaware, and thus realized the album ''La Bella Vista''.

His album ''Avalon Sutra'' from 2004 was billed as "Harold Budd's Last Recorded Work" by the record label Samadhi Sound. Their press release continued: "''Avalon Sutra'' brings to a conclusion thirty years of sustained musical activity. Asked for his reasons, Budd says only that he feels that he has said what he has to say. With characteristic humility, he concludes, "I don’t mind disappearing!" A special celebration concert featuring Budd and guest-starring many of the musicians he had worked with throughout his career was presented at Brighton Dome in May 2005, also billed as being Budd's last public performance. In spite of this, Budd's soundtrack to the film ''Mysterious Skin'' (a collaboration with Robin Guthrie) and ''Music for 'Fragments from the Inside''' (with Eraldo Bernocchi) were both released in 2005.

David Sylvian's independent record label Samadhisound released ''Perhaps'' in February 2007, a live recording of Budd's improvised performance in tribute to his late friend (and associate teacher at the then newly formed California Institute of Arts) James Tenney. Recorded at CalArts on December 6, the album is only available as a digital download.

Samadhisound released a podcast of Harold Budd in conversation with Akira Rabelais in April 2007. In this (Samadhisound Podcast #2), Harold said although he had believed at the time of recording ''Avalon Sutra'' that it would be his last album, he no longer felt that way. "It was a time in my life when things weren't just falling together for me, and I thought that I was just going to let it all slide ... and I was sincere about it but if I had been more conscious of my real feelings and had explored my inner sanctum more I would've seen that it was a preposterous thing to do ... I was dreadfully lonely; I was living alone in the desert and had been for too long, really, and I felt that isolation very severely after a while, and it's probably a version of self-pity, I'm sorry to say, to have publicly said something like that, but there it is, I said it, turns out I wasn't telling the truth - I didn't know it at the time."

Darla Records released two CDs by Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd in June 2007, ''After the Night Falls'' and ''Before the Day Breaks''. Recorded in Spring 2006, each features nine tracks with linked titles, e.g. "How Distant Your Heart"/"How Close Your Soul" and "I Returned Her Glance"/"And Then I Turned Away".

In October 2008, a collaboration with Clive Wright entitled ''Song for Lost Blossoms'' was released by Darla Records. It includes recordings that were done live and in-studio at different locations, including both artists' homes. The album features some of their work done together between 2004 and 2006. A second collaborative effort with Wright, ''Candylion'' followed in 2009, again on Darla Records.

It was announced that Harold Budd will appear as one of the featured composer/performers at San Francisco's Other Minds festival in March, 2012.

Discography

See also

References

External links

Category:1936 births Category:Living people Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:University of Southern California alumni Category:20th-century classical composers Category:21st-century classical composers Category:Ambient musicians Category:New Age musicians Category:American pianists Category:American electronic musicians Category:American experimental musicians Category:American poets Category:American record producers Category:All Saints Records artists Category:E.G. Records artists Category:4AD artists Category:Samadhi Sound artists