Anne Jennifer Dudley (néeBeckingham; born 7 May 1956) is an English composer, keyboardist, conductor and pop musician. She was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001.[1] She has worked in the classical and pop genres, as a film composer, and was one of the core members of the synth-pop band Art of Noise. In 1998, Dudley won an Oscar for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score for The Full Monty. In addition to over twenty other film scores, in 2012 she served as music producer for the film version of Les Misérables,[2] also acting as arranger and composing some new additional music.
Career
Dudley was born in Beckenham, Kent. She attended Eltham Hill Grammar School for Girls.[3] She graduated with a master's in music from King's College London in 1978.[4] Trained as a classical performer, she moved into the competitive commercial field as a session musician, where her professional relationship with Trevor Horn began. In 1982, Dudley contributed to the Horn-produced The Lexicon of Love album by ABC. She went from fleshing out keyboard parts to scoring the album's orchestrations (which were, according to Horn, her first-ever string arrangements)[5] and also co-writing one of the songs.[6]
Dudley was a founding member of the band Art of Noise in 1983, which helped pioneer the use of sampling within the pop genre. Their hits include "Beat Box" (1984), "Moments in Love" (1985), "Close (to the Edit)" (1984), "Paranoimia" (1986), which featured a monologue about insomnia by the artificial intelligence character, Max Headroom, and, with Tom Jones, "Kiss", a Top 10 in 1988. Art of Noise also produced the theme tune to the ITV game show The Krypton Factor which was used between 1986 and 1993. "(Theme From) The Krypton Factor" was composed and recorded in 1986 and was reworked as "Crusoe" on their 1987 album.
In 1989, Dudley produced and conducted the string arrangements for the eponymous debut album by Welsh pop duo Waterfront. Her intricate production is demonstrated most notably on the song "Nature of Love", which was released as a single in both the UK and US. Another collaboration in 1989 was with Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys and Bernard Sumner of New Order; Dudley contributed the lush string arrangements on their debut Electronic release, "Getting Away with It", which peaked at #12 in the UK in December 1989, and #38 in the US in 1990.
Dudley produced two tracks on the 2002 Opera Babes album Beyond Imagination (ranking No. 1 on the UK classical charts for 11 weeks, and No. 4 on the US Billboard charts). In 2004, she produced the album Voice for Alison Moyet. The album, an eclectic collection of cover versions, reached No. 7 on the UK Albums Chart.
Her works for orchestra include "Northern Lights", a 14-minute reflection of Norway's Aurora Borealis for full orchestra, performed in 2005 and 2006 at the Royal Festival Hall and broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Late Junction programme in May 2005. 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. Dudley arranged Bach's Chaconne from Partita in D minor for piano trio, and a recording by the Eroica Trio appears on their Baroque album. Her album Ancient and Modern, with modern versions of some traditional hymns and Bachchorales, was released in 1999. 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, which was recorded and released as a DVD in December 2009. The show was toured in 2009 with eight different regional orchestras participating. It involved the orchestra playing the Nokia theme tune and a french horn concerto evolving into the theme from Coronation Street.
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.
When Saturday Comes (1996), starring Sean Bean, Pete Postlethwaite, Emily Lloyd. Directed by Maria Giese;
The Full Monty (1997), a Peter Cattaneo-directed comedy about six unemployed steel workers who decide to form a male striptease act. Dudley won the "Best Original Musical or Comedy Score" Oscar for her music;
Club Classical: Orchestral Chillout Sounds (2003) (BBC Music Magazine free cover disc compilation CD of live and studio recordings, also including two works by Dave Heath)
^ abDoerschuk, Bob (2008). Keyboard Presents: the Best of the '80s – the Artists, Instruments, and Techniques of an Era. Backbeat Books. p. 6. ISBN978-0-87930-930-5.
