Matt Dunkley
Matt studied trumpet and piano at the London College of Music and has gone on to become a leading orchestrator, arranger and conductor, who has also developed a successful parallel career as a talented film, tv and theatre composer. He has worked on over 130 movies, everything from Black Swan, to Inception, to Moulin Rouge. He has also worked with recording artists such as Massive Attack, Patti Smith, Badly Drawn Boy, Elliot Smith, Nick Cave and Catatonia.
He has conducted all of the UK's top orchestras as well as international ensembles such as The Los Angeles Philharmonic (at The Hollywood Bowl), and The Sydney Symphony Orchestra (at the Sydney Opera House). Matt has scored two feature films, a number of network series for British Television as well as music for adverts and production libraries. For the theatre, he wrote and arranged a ground-breaking arena version of Peter Pan: The Neverending Story, that is currently on a world tour, and he has just completed the score to Flanders Fields, a theatre piece set alongside a war grave cemetery in Belgium.
Releases
Cycles 7-16 is a natural progression from Matt Dunkley’s deubt solo album, Six Cycles, released on Village Green in 2016. Like the debut, it was recorded in Berlin with the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg. With this album, however, Matt pushed himself further, expanding his writing horizons.
As well as being almost double the length, this album boasts a broader sonic palette than its predecessor, such as the full symphony orchestra on ‘Cycle 12’ or the seven solo pianos used on ‘Cycle 14’. On others, Matt returns to his classical roots, using a string chamber orchestra on ‘Cycle 11’ and ‘Cycle 16’.
Touring and travelling over the last two years, influences arose from spending time in different cities and places. The wintry, tense ‘Cycle 7’ was inspired by an early morning in Berlin, while ‘Cycle 15’ was written whilst on a conducting trip to Norway.
Cycles EP
Matt Dunkley
12” EP, Digital EP
Matt Dunkley releases an EP on March 25th via 12" and digital called "Cycles EP" featuring remixes by Clint Mansell and Nigel Wiesehan.
Six Cycles
Matt Dunkley
"Six Cycles" is the much-anticipated debut from one of the world's leading orchestrators, arrangers and conductors, Matt Dunkley.
Dunkley reveals, "the inspiration for the six pieces that comprise 'Six Cycles' all derive from disparate sources, whether it a piece of poetry, a painting or the emotion of personal loss. Initially they seemed to be unrelated, but as I listened to them as a whole, a sense of them belonging together slowly emerged, forming a true "cycle". I want the listener to discover their own world within my music, hence the willfully enigmatic titles."
Recorded with the renowned Babelsberg Film Orchestra, the result is a rich and nuanced cinematic soundscape, replete with stirring builds of Wagnerian grandeur.
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