Episode 7: Anne Dudley

Joy

In Episode 7, director Olly Blackburn discusses creative process, collaboration, and the fusion of music and film with composer Anne Dudley.

Anne Dudley is a composer, producer, arranger, orchestrator, and pianist. Over the course of a varied career, Anne has won an Oscar, a Grammy, a Brit and an Ivor Novello. Her work spans the classical and pop genres and she has collaborated with many leading artists over the years.

She was a founding member of the 1980s electronic music group Art of Noise, whose pioneering experiments with sound sampling remain influential to this day. Their stand-out hits include “Beat Box” (1984), “Moments in Love” (1985), “Close (to the Edit)” (1984), “Paranoimia” (1986). Artists who have sampled Art of Noise include The Prodigy, Drake and Dua Lipa.

Dudley has composed many scores for film and TV, including The Crying Game, American History X, Elle, Mamma Mia Here We Go Again and the long-running TV series Poldark . She won an Oscar for her score to The Full Monty.

As an arranger and keyboard player Anne was a major part of the iconic Lexicon of Love album with ABC. She has continued to arrange for such diverse artists as Will Young, Jeff Beck, Seal, Robbie Williams, Rod Stewart and Emeli Sandé. She has co-written songs with Malcolm McLaren (“Buffalo Gals”), Cathy Dennis (“Too Many Walls”), and Sting (“This Was Never Meant to Be”). She produced the Tom Jones hit “You Can Leave Your Hat On” (1988) and a Debbie Harry single “Strike Me Pink” (1993).

Her first commission as Composer in Association with the BBC Concert Orchestra was “Music and Silence“, inspired by the novel of the same name by Rose Tremain and first performed at The Royal Festival Hall in 2002. She was the musical director for Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra, first performed in Brighton then at the Royal Albert Hall in 2008.

Anne has provided four arrangements for the Last Night of the Proms – the latest being a version of Pomp and Circumstance, rearranged for a smaller, socially distanced orchestra in 2020. Anne composed a concert piece for the violinist Joshua Bell entitled “The Man with the Violin” featuring narration and animation. It was premiered in Washington in February 2017 and Ottawa in December 2017.

Dudley collaborated with Sam Taylor-Wood in producing the sound and video installation Sigh at the White Cube in 2008. This work featured the BBC Concert Orchestra on eight large projected screens, miming to Dudley’s score. In 2017 she received an Ivor Novello award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. In 2019, she conducted the Southbank Sinfonia during Martin Fry’s Lexicon of Love tour.

Olly Blackburn is an award-winning film director and screenwriter. He trained as an historian and after spending time as a journalist and copywriter found himself working in feature films, television and commercials. His films have played at major festivals including Telluride, Sundance, Edinburgh, Austin and London. In TV drama Olly’s work ranges from tough contemporary thrillers like Amazon’s The Widow and StartUp, to the human drama of Jack Thorne’s Glue and period pieces like Victoria and Andrew Davies’ adapatation of Jane Austen’s Sanditon.

MusikMotion is a collaboration between MusikMotioin Labs and the University of North Texas College of Music showcasing the intersection of music and the moving image.