Carter Burwell

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Carter Burwell
Born November 18, 1955
New York City, New York

Carter Burwell (born November 18, 1955) is an American composer of film scores.

Contents

[edit] Life and career

Burwell was born in New York City. He graduated from King School in Stamford, Connecticut,[citation needed] and Harvard College.

As a film composer, Burwell has had a long working relationship with the Coen Brothers, providing music for every film they have made (except for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, where he simply provided additional music to a score primarily composed by T Bone Burnett). He enjoys working with left-field directors and has also scored Spike Jonze's films. Among his best known film scores are And the Band Played On (1993), Conspiracy Theory (1997), Hamlet (2000), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), In Bruges (2008) and Twilight (2008).

Burwell, like many composers, studied piano. Starting lessons when he was 7, he studied Mozart mostly, but eventually quit.

In April 2005, Burwell composed and conducted music, performed by The Parabola Ensemble, for the plays "Sawbones" written and directed by the Coen Brothers, "Hope Leaves the Theater" written and directed by Charlie Kaufman and "Anomalisa" written and directed by Francis Fregoli. This was a segment of the sound-only production Theater of the New Ear, which debuted at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY with support from Sirius Satellite Radio, United Talent Agency and Sony Pictures.

Burwell married Christine Sciulli in 1999.[1]

Carter Burwell's interest in music began when Steve Kraemer, a fellow high school student, taught him basic blues improvisation on the piano. To the annoyance of his family and friends he kept this up through college.

Ultimately the punk rock movement and its encouragement to get on stage no matter how poorly educated or prepared gave him the impetus to start performing. He did this in New York with several bands notably The Same, Thick Pigeon and Radiante.

By 1986 he had composed the music for a dance piece, RAB which premiered at the Avignon Festival, and was touring worldwide with The Harmonic Choir, David Hykes' experimental vocal group which specialized in overtone singing.

He was alternating between live performance, dance and theatre commissions, and film scoring. His chamber opera The Celestial Alphabet Event was presented in New York in 1991 and other theatre pieces include Mother (1994) and Cara Lucia (2003), both with the experimental theatre group Mabou Mines.

[edit] Thick Pigeon

Burwell once played in a band named Thick Pigeon with Stanton Miranda. The group released only two albums, Too Crazy Cowboys and Miranda Dali. On Burwell's soundtrack for Psycho III, Miranda was a featured singer.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] References

  1. ^ Carter Burwell

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Burwell"