Craig Armstrong 'Piano Works' album

There are no barriers in Craig Armstrong’s world. Whether he’s composing classical pieces, writing film scores, recording his own solo albums or collaborating with the likes of Madonna, Massive Attack and U2, it is all simply music.

His latest album, Piano Works, is a case in point. “I’m not sure what it is,” he says, “Is it classical? Or is it an extension of the work I did with Massive Attack? I don’t know, and I don’t really care. All I wanted to do was make an album that sounded beautiful.”

The idea for Piano Works arose out of a short solo piano sequence Craig gave in the middle of a concert in Paris. “It was the first time I had played piano in public in years, but the audience reacted really well to it,” he recalls.

Surprisingly, it was the violin, and not the piano, that was his first instrument. “But the piano is where I feel most at home,” he explains. “I regard myself primarily as a composer, and the piano is where I compose. It’s my tool, I play for several hours every day and I have a deep love for it.”

On some of the tracks, Craig worked alongside Berlin-based laptop queen and e-poet AGF and added subtle electronic arrangements via a revolutionary program known as “Pluggo”, which allowed him to electronically manipulate the sound of the piano in ‘real’ time.

Craig says of the arrangements, “I’d write the piano track and then whilst it was playing I would improvise with it electronically, but in ‘real’ time. I wanted to create an album that looked to the future. Even though some of the tracks sound very electronic, It’s all really piano because this program allows you to rule the technology, rather than the other way around.” Both ‘Hidden’ and ‘Diffuse’ on the album were created in such fashion.

Piano Works presents a new aspect of Craig Armstrong’s music. At the same time, while we are experiencing a new aspect of his music, it’s really a logical extension of everything else he has done in his extraordinarily diverse career. After studying violin and composition at the Royal Academy, he branched into theatre and became resident composer at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow. His other stage work includes commissions for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

His many film scores include Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’, for which he won a Bafta (British equivalent of an Oscar) and an Ivor Novello (British Songwriting Award), and ‘Moulin Rouge’, for which he won a Golden Globe, Ivor Novello and American Film Institute Award. Craig won a third Ivor Novello for his music for Phillip Noyce's ‘The Quiet American’ He also scored ‘The Bone Collector’ and the Oscar-winning ‘One Day In September’.

His classical works include, a chamber opera commissioned for the Edinburgh festival, a homage to Luchino Visconti; which was performed at the Barbican, and various other orchestral commissions for the Northern Sinfonietta, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the BT Ensemble and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

These days Craig is in such demand that he has to pick and chose his projects carefully. There are more films in the pipeline, including the next work from David McKenzie, ‘Asylum’, and a new Robert Redford movie ‘The Clearing’.

But to Craig Armstrong it is all simply music. Without any barriers. “Sounds from all over the planet are now easily accessible,” he enthuses. “So how can you not be influenced by everything you hear?”

On August 24th, Craig Armstrong’s third solo offering, Piano Works, will emerge as the composer’s most beautifully crafted work to date.

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Craig Armstrong - Piano Works