Anne Dudley

Anne Dudley (born Anne Jennifer Beckingham, 7 May 1956, Chatham, Kent) is an Academy Award-winning English orchestra composer and pop musician, and was the BBC Concert Orchestra's composer in Association between January 2002 and January 2005. She has worked in both the classical and pop genres. She is perhaps best known, however, as one of the seminal members of the synthpop band, Art of Noise. In 1998, she won an Academy Award for Best Original Score (Comedy or Musical) for "The Full Monty".

Career

Trained as a classical performer, Dudley then moved to the competitive commercial field as a session musician, where her professional relationship with Trevor Horn began. In 1981 Dudley made significant contributions to the Horn produced "The Lexicon of Love" album by ABC. She went from fleshing-out keyboard parts to scoring the album's orchestrations and even co-writing the song, "4 Ever 2 Gether". In 1990 she contributed strings on the Associates album "Wild and Lonely", written by Billy Mackenzie.

Her pop arranging career has included work with groups such as The Pet Shop Boys and Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, whose "Rattlesnakes" album was an early standout effort. She has also co-written a 1930's inspired song with Sting called "This Was Never Meant To Be" in 1996, which is on his U.S. released Maxi Single entitled "I'm So Happy That I Can't Stop Crying". She provided orchestral arrangements for the Wet Wet Wet track "Blue For You" on the album "Holding Back the River". She even produced Scarlet's 1994 transatlantic hit Independent Love Song. She was a founding member of the successful band Art of Noise, who helped pioneer the use of electronic and incidental music within the pop music context.

Dudley's music for film includes the score for "American History X", "Tristan & Isolde (film)", as well as "Zwei Frauen" (aka "Silence Like Glass"), "The Crying Game" and "Buster", and in 1998 she won the "Best Original Musical or Comedy Score" Oscar for "The Full Monty". Her TV music includes scores for "Kavanagh Q.C.", "Jeeves and Wooster" and "The Perfect Blue". She has also worked as a session musician for many clients. In 2004, she both scored and produced the album "Voice" for Alison Moyet (the two are neighbours).

In addition to her above participations, Anne Dudley also composed the music score of Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance Irish dance spectacle.

Discography, not including work from Art of Noise

*"Songs From the Victorious City" (1990) (collaboration with Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman)
*"Jeeves and Wooster" (1990)
*"The Crying Game" (1992)
*"Ancient and Modern" (1995)
*"10th Kingdom" (2000)
*"A Different Light" (2001)
*"Club Classical - Orchestral chillout sounds" - a compilation of album tracks and live recordings available only from BBC Music Magazine.
*"Seriously Chilled" (2003)
*"Black Book" (2006)

External links

* [http://www.annedudley.co.uk/ Anne Dudley's official webpage]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/orchestras/concertorchestra/news/news_5.shtml Anne Dudley and BBC Concert Orchestra]
* [http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/dudley_anne/bio.jhtml Anne Dudley (from VH1)]
* [http://www.zttaat.com/ Zang Tuum Tumb and all that]
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* [http://www.annedudley.co.uk/disco_songsfromthevictoriouscity.html#disco_songsfromthevictoriouscity/ Anne Dudley's Songs from victorious City with Jaz Coleman]