Music For The Films Of Peter Mullan

Craig Armstrong is a Golden Globe, BAFTA, Ivor Novello and Grammy-winning composer whose iconic movie scores include Moulin Rouge!, Romeo + Juliet, Love Actually, The Great Gatsby and many more. He has also collaborated with a diverse range of musicians on tracks and remixes – among them are Madonna, U2, Massive Attack, Pet Shop Boys, Texas, Yoko Ono, Mogwai and Luciano Pavarotti. Celebrated worldwide for his award-winning film music, Craig Armstrong is to release a new album on his own CMA Records recording label. A score album featuring music written by Craig Armstrong for all of Peter Mullan’s directorial films, celebrating a collaboration spanning two decades. This is a rare and very moving collection of film score tracks from Peter Mullan’s first ever short films: Fridge, Good Day For The Bad Guys through to the staggeringly beautiful themes from Orphans amongst the other feature films. The album comprises intimate piano performances recorded and performed by Craig Armstrong amongst beautiful orchestral recordings in the Glasgow City Halls. This is the second release on Craig Armstrong’s label CMA Records, Rosa Morta an electronic album was released in 2016. One of these tracks, Crumble was used almost in entirety by Peter Mullan in the breath taking end scenes in Neds, although it wasn’t written for the picture it fitted the scene perfectly and led to the predominately 1970’s synthesiser composed score for the rest of the film. Craig Armstrong and Peter Mullan first met in the 1980’s at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow. Michael Boyd (Royal Shakespeare Company Director 2002 - 2012) was the artistic director at the time and together they collaborated on productions such as Losing Alec and Macbeth.  Peter Mullan began making his first short films after this period and as he knew Craig Armstrong from this theatre time he was an obvious choice to ask to score these shorts. Recalling this time at a recent talk at Edinburgh Film Festival, Craig Armstrong said he told Peter he would do these short film scores as long as he promised to hire him for his first feature film!  By the time Peter Mullan came to create Orphans (1998), Craig Armstrong was now completing work on Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which he went on to win an Ivor Novello and Bafta for original score. Since then Craig Armstrong has written the scores for the next of Peter Mullan’s feature films; the Venice Film Festival winner The Magdalene Sisters (2002) and Neds (2010).   From their experience in the Tron Theatre both learning their crafts from this young age means they now have a short hand in how they work together, an understanding based on their history creatively and also from both living in Glasgow. It’s a special album featuring performances from the Scottish Ensemble’s extraordinary cellist Alison Lawrance, another long term collaborator for Armstrong on his solo albums and film work. Alison Lawrance performs with such grace and lament on the track John Leaves Home from Neds and on John’s Theme she creates somehow and beautifully a hopeful expression of isolation. We are left with a giddy and haunting goodbye from the actor Gary Lewis from Good Day For The Bad Guys. The scores for Close and Fridge even at this early stage in Armstrong’s career show his trademark ability to compose to the core of the emotion he is seeing on screen. These tracks do not age despite their date and to have this collection in one place is a special listening experience and a great nod to both these extremely talented Scottish artists. The album art work images are all shots taken in Glasgow by the photographer Martina Ivanov Hoogland, with design by International Magic. Orphans was first released 20 years ago this year and was recently celebrated in a BBC documentary Orphans Reunited, featuring Peter Mullan, Craig Armstrong and the cast. A new film score by Craig Armstrong follows this release, for Adrian Noble’s Mrs Lowry and Son featuring Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Spall (in cinemas August 30th). Craig Armstrong composed specifically for piano and strings “wanting to reflect the intimacy of the performance within the score”. And a new score for Me Before You director Thea Sharrock’s new Disney animation is currently underway.