Search - Anne Dudley :: Ancient & Modern

Anne Dudley is an enigmatic figure. She's a founding member of the British dance group Art of Noise, a noted film composer with an Academy Award for The Full Monty soundtrack, and she's a classically trained keyboardist. In recent months, Anne Dudley has released a new Art of Noise CD, The Seduction of Claude Debussy, that adds dance beats to the classical French composer's melodies, and she has a solo album, Ancient & Modern, on which she rearranges carols, hymns, and fugues for orchestra. Ancient & Modern lives up to its title. She takes the Bach prelude "Coventry Carol" and Tallis's "Canon" and arranges them for orchestra and a choir called the Sixteen. Although these recordings should rightly be called adaptations and arrangements, Dudley takes writing credits for all the album's music, including venerable hymns like "Veni Emmanuel." The album is at its best when Dudley shows her contemporary influences, as on "Canticles of the Sun and Moon." The song is based around the hymn "From All Who Dwell Beneath the Sky," but Dudley gives it a minimalist turn with cyclical marimba lines. She performs a similar fete with "Veni Emmanuel," building an unlikely tension and dynamic explosiveness in this usually sedate hymn. --John Diliberto