Biography
Anne Dudley is a musician, composer, arranger and producer. Her work crosses the pop and classical worlds in a unique way.
Early Years
She studied music for 3 years at the Royal College of Music gaining a Performer’s Diploma and was awarded the B. Mus prize for the highest marks in her year. This was followed by a year at King’s College where Anne was awarded a Masters Degree. In 2004 the Royal College of Music recognized Anne’s outstanding career by awarding her a prestigious Fellowship. In July 2011 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Kent.
Her career in pop music started with a meeting with Trevor Horn in the early 1980s. She was the keyboard player and arranger on such records as ABC’s “Lexicon of Love”, Frankie goes to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes” and Malcolm McLaren’s “Buffalo Gals” which she co-wrote.
Art of Noise
Anne was a founding member of Art of Noise, whose pioneering attitude towards sampling was highly innovative and remains influential to this day. Art of Noise are popularly remembered for their collaborations with Duane Eddy (“Peter Gunn”), Max Headroom (“Paranoimia”) and Tom Jones (“Kiss”) but it is tracks such as “Moments in Love” and “Close to the Edit” which have provided the blueprint for the “remixology” age. The group re-invented itself for the Millennium with a stunning album “The Seduction of Claude Debussy”. Art of Noise lives on in the recent album "Anne Dudley plays the Art of Noise" released 2018 and some live performances with colleagues J.Jeczalik and Gary Langan.
Arranger
Anne has written with and arranged for artists such as Pulp, The Pet Shop Boys, Robbie Williams, Jeff Beck, Seal and Elton John. In fact Anne’s string arrangements can be heard on a wide range of records – from Boyzone and Travis to Rod Stewart and S Club 7. She played the piano and contributed a string arrangement to Will Young’s number one single “Leave Right Now”.
Recently Anne has worked with Emeli Sandé and Jake Shears from Scissor Sisters. Both of these were for BBC Radio 2 Piano Room with Ken Bruce.
Artist
Anne’s first solo album ”Ancient and Modern” was released on Echo Records in the UK and EMI Angel in the USA in 1995 to critical acclaim.
Her second album “A Different Light” including a classical re-arrangement of “Moments in Love” was released in 2002.
She arranged and conducted a spectacular concert of “chill out” music for the orchestra which took place at the Royal Festival Hall in October 2002 and Brixton Academy in February 2003. This concert was repeated in the idyllic outdoor setting of Kenwood on Saturday July 10th 2004. The album “Seriously Chilled” – a new take on chill-out music was released on EMI in 2003.
Anne has recorded an album entitled "Plays the Art of Noise" which explores the various and intriguing textures of the acoustic, electric and prepared piano.
Following the purchase of a new piano during lockdown, Anne wrote a series of pieces for her new album "Crossing the Bar". This album, released in April 2022, features both original compositions and new arrangements of popular traditional folk tunes and is written for piano and strings.
Film Composer
Anne has been writing music for films for over twenty years. Her scores include "Everybody's Talking About Jamie". "The Hustle", "Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again", "Elle", “The Crying Game”, ”Pushing Tin” and the long-running TV series “Jeeves and Wooster”.
She has won multiple awards including an Oscar in 1998 for “The Full Monty”.
Her music was a major part of the BBC drama "Poldark" which ran for five series. The soundtrack entered the classical charts at number two.
Other scores Anne has completed include the animated feature for the BBC/S4C entitled “The Miracle Maker” (the story of the New Testament with Ralph Fiennes as the voice of Jesus), and a ten part drama for HBO - “The Tenth Kingdom”. Anne scored Tony Kayes’s first feature for New Line Cinema, “American History X”. Her long working relationship with Tony has resulted in many award-winning commercials such as Volvo (“Twister”) Vauxhall Astra (“Hundreds of Babies”), Reebok (“Field of Dreams”) and Guinness (“Fishing”). In addition she has been scoring the outstanding Stella Artois commercials for several years.
She scored Stephen Fry’s acclaimed debut feature “Bright Young Things”. In December 2007 the Old Vic production of Cinderella, adapted by Stephen Fry, included songs and incidental music composed by Anne. The show was a sell out for its entire run and may be revived very soon.
Her score for the BBC drama “The Key” was nominated for an Ivor Novello award as was her music for "Trial and Retribution". Both series one and two of "Poldark" were nominated for a BAFTA.
She also scored the acclaimed and controversial "Elle" (a César award winner for best film) for director Paul Verhoeven. The score was awarded the prestigious French SACEM award in 2017. Anne worked again with Paul Verhoeven on "Benedetta" in 2021.
Anne was the recipient of an Ivor Novello Award for outstanding contribution to British music in 2017.
Classical
Anne was appointed the first Composer in Association with the BBC Concert Orchestra in 2001. Her first commission was “Music and Silence”: an orchestral score based on scenes from Rose Tremain’s novel, which received its premiere at the Orchestra’s 50th Birthday Celebration Concert at the Royal Festival Hall in September 2002. A Christmas concert based on the theme of “Ancient and Modern” took place in December 2003 with the vocal ensemble I Fagiolini at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and featured the world premiere of Anne’s cantata “A Winter Solstice”. This concert was so popular and successful it was reprised at the Chichester Festival Theatre.
“Northern Lights” inspired by the music and culture of Norway was premiered in February 2005 and repeated in November 2006 receiving enthusiastic reviews in "The Times" and "The Independent". She composed three pieces for children with the cellist Steven Isserlis for narrator and string soloists based on musical fairy tales.
Anne composed two short operas commissioned by the Royal Opera House with libretti by Terry Jones - "The Good Doctor" and "The Owl and the Pussycat". She also composed a musical piece for a Sam Taylor-Wood installation at The White Cube.
Working together with Bill Bailey, a whole concert was constructed as a learning tool about the orchestra and how it works - of course what was learnt was unreliable in the extreme! This toured around the UK and ended with a finale in the Royal Albert Hall which was recorded for DVD release.
Anne has worked internationally, including in 2020 she composed a multi media piece for the violinist Joshua Bell entitled "The Man with the Violin". This was premiered in Washington with the National Symphony Orchestra and was performed in Canada at the National Arts Centre. Anne composed a piece for the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra. The commission came about as a result of the SACEM prize awarded for the score to "Elle". She also worked with the Nidaros Cathedral Choir in Norway on a specially commissioned piece entitled "One Touch of Nature'. This premiered in 2022 in the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim.
Anne also took on the monumental task of rearranging "Pomp and Circumstance" for the Last Night of the Proms during lockdown in 2020 - a challenge to arrange for an orchestra half the size!
Producer
Anne produced and arranged Alison Moyet’s hit album entitled “Voice” a collection of evocative and atmospheric standards.
She produced all the songs for "Walking On Sunshine" - a romantic comedy set in Italy and based around hit songs of the 1980s.
She was also music producer on the film version of "Les Miserables", overseeing the live on-set vocal recordings and re-orchestrating and providing additional music.
Anne arranged and produced Eleanor Tomlinson's debut album "Tales From Home" released on Sony Masterworks in June 2018.