Marius De Vries
MARIUS DE VRIES
MUSIC COMPOSER
Marius has been involved in some of the most culture-defining recordings and soundtracks of the past two decades, and has won two BAFTAs and an Ivor Novello award for his film composition work, as well as four Grammy nominations for soundtrack and record production. Beginning his music career playing keyboards for the English eighties pop-soul band The Blow Monkeys, he has since written, arranged and produced across a wide range of styles and genres for artists such as Madonna, Bjork, David Bowie, Rufus Wainwright, Chrissie Hynde, Neil Finn, Annie Lennox, Bebel Gilberto, David Gray, P.J. Harvey, U2, Massive Attack, Elbow, Perry Farrell and Josh Groban, amongst many others. In the film and theatre world, his work includes music direction, score composition and song productions for Baz Luhrmann, George Lucas, Andrew Lloyd Webber, A.R. Rahman, Zack Snyder, Daniel Kramer, and Stephan Elliott.
De Vries’ work in the early 1990s with The Sugarcubes led to a key role on Björk’s “Debut,” which marked the beginning of a long collaborative relationship with Nellee Hooper, forming the team responsible for landmark recordings with Massive Attack, Björk, Madonna, The Sneaker Pimps, Tina Turner, and U2, and ultimately the soundtrack and score for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, for which de Vries received the first of his two BAFTAs.
A few years later, de Vries music-directed the groundbreaking Moulin Rouge, resulting in another Grammy nomination, a second BAFTA, and numerous other awards. Marius composed the score for Stephan Elliot’s (Priscilla Queen of The Desert) surreal thriller The Eye of the Beholder, and the jazz-age period comedy Easy Virtue.
In Musical Theatre, Marius has worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber on several projects, co-producing the cast album for A.R Rahman’s Bombay Dreams, and contributing music production and arrangements to the sequel to Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies. He also produced the cast album for Richard Thomas’ hugely successful (and equally controversial) West End comedy hit Jerry Springer The Opera.
In early 2008, Marius created an hour-long contemporary dance piece, Squaremap of Q4, for the award-winning Spanish choreographer Rafael Bonachela which premiered at the South Bank in London. The following year, he recorded and produced the eclectic Chinese singer Sa Ding Ding’s second album for Universal Records, Harmony, in Beijing.
Moving from London to to Los Angeles in 2010, Marius contributed score and song productions to Matthew Vaughn’s irreverent superhero film Kick-Ass, and Zack Snyder’s music-driven action fantasy Sucker Punch, as well as co-producing an LP with Robbie Robertson, featuring guests Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Tom Morello and others.
June 2013 saw the world premiere in Melbourne of de Vries’ score for King Kong Live on Stage, directed by Daniel Kramer, with a book by Craig Lucas and animatronics by Creature Technologies’ Sonny Tilders. A Broadway mounting is set for early 2017.
Another collaboration with Rufus Wainwright (and William Shakespeare) arrived in early 2016, an album of musical settings of 9 sonnets, released to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, entitled “Take all My Loves” and featuring Florence Welsh, Sian Philips, Helena Bonham Carter, Carrie Fisher, William Shatner, and the german soprano Anna Prohaska, among others. Marius narrates the title track.
Marius served as Music Director and Composer on George Lucas’ animated fairytale musical, Strange Magic, released early in 2015. He is now attached as Musical Director and Music Producer to (not to mention a small acting role in) Whiplash director Damien Chazelle’s forthcoming original musical LaLaLand, completed in July 2016, as well as developing an album project with Chrissie Hynde.
