Glasgow born composer Craig Armstrong is not a household name - yet. But quietly and without great fanfare his music has been heard in many places, in theatres and concert halls, on the television, on film and on CD. Armstrong's music is distinguished from many of his contemporaries by belonging to no particular genre and can't therefore be easily categorised. It seems to ignore all the artificial boundaries that exist in many parts of the music world, and seemingly bridges all sorts of gulfs between popular, film, classical and dance. His musical education was nothing out of the ordinary, having studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music. He then studied Music and Dance, followed by Electronic Music and he won the "Jazz musician of the Year" award at a young age. His work since then has shown him to be an all-round musician, since he composes, conducts, produces, arranges and orchestrates, and plays piano some of his albums. For a while he was the resident composer for the Tron Theatre in Glasgow
While his classical background has resulted in a lot of work for the theatre and the concert hall, he has also been much in demand from a variety of artists needing to have their work arranged and orchestrated. He has therefore collaborated with many well-known names in popular music, working with Massive Attack (on their album "Protection"), with Madonna (on the "Frozen" album), U2, Bjork and The Pet Shop Boys. Having worked at both ends of this spectrum, it is no surprise that his film music is easily able to sit in either camp or indeed move effortlessly between these styles and off at odd tangents. Much of his film work has been in the category of "arrangements", "orchestrations" and "additional music", like his work with Baz Luhrmann on "Romeo + Juliet" and Moulin Rouge. This means that his music is sometimes masked by a lot of song material in the movie.
"Romeo + Juliet" is an interesting, modern yet operatic version of the familiar Shakepearean play. The songs in this display a reasonable amount of angst, by artists like Garbage, Gavin Friday, Radiohead, The Wannadies and the Cardigans, Des'ree singing the Love theme "Kissing You". The instrumental interlude in this Love Theme is now very familiar in the UK from its use in promoting the Television coverage of Euro 2004. (Indeed programme makers seem to increasingly view Armstrong's music as a ready source of "soundbites".) Most of the film's songs are covered by the first album of the soundtrack, but the musical heart of "Romeo + Juliet" rests largely in cues other than the songs. To really appreciate Armstrong's contribution to the film, including his appropriate quotation from Wagner's Liebestod from "Tristan and Isolde", it is the second album which you should aim for at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. Other film work has seen Armstrong's composition work play a bigger role (in the sense that it is not hidden behind song tracks), such as his work on "Plunkett & Macleane", "Best Laid Plans" and "The Quiet American" whose soundtrack is due to be released shortly on CD. The "Plunkett & Macleane" soundtrack is a good example of his film work. It blends various synth sounds with strings, voices and percussion in a range of styles which suggest everything from baroque to rave music. It is available from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. Armstrong is currently working on the soundtracks for "Tomb Raider II" and "Love, Actually".
Check out our review of his concert piece Northern Sound...Islands, which has links to his solo albums featuring a range of music from his usual broad spectrum. Craig Armstrong was recently in the newspapers in Scotland when he resigned from the Cultural Commission established to review funding of the Arts in the country, referring to proposals to scale down Scottish Opera. Armstrong is also participating in a programme called "Five:15" to present 5 15-minute operas for Scottish Opera. Armstrong's 15-minute opera from the five is called "Gesualdo" and was penned by Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin. For soundtrack collectors, Armstrong has a new album called "Piano Works" where he plays a number of new works and arrangements of pieces from his films and albums. See our review of Piano Works or these links on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com for more information. For the complete experience pianists will want to get the full sheet music transcription from The Music Room.
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