Craig Armstrong

CRAIG ARMSTRONG born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1959, studied composition and piano at the Royal Academy of Music, London, from 1977 to 1981. Since then, from his base in Glasgow, he has written award-winning film scores and classical and theatrical compositions, and he has recorded his own solo albums.

Armstrong‘s score for Baz Luhrmann‘s groundbreaking musical Moulin Rouge! earned him AFI‘s Composer of the Year, a Golden Globe for Best Original Score of the Year and a BAFTA for Achievement in Film Music. Armstrong was awarded an Ivor Novello Award for Best Original Film Score for Phillip Noyce‘s The Quiet American. His other feature film scoring credits include the Oliver Stone drama World Trade Center; the Oscar-winning bio-pic Ray, for which Armstrong was awarded a Grammy® Award for Best Original Score; and the ensemble comedy smash Love Actually. His scores can also be heard in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Magdalene Sisters, Kiss of the Dragon, The Bone Collector, The Clearing, Plunkett & Macleane, Best Laid Plans, and Orphans. His score to William Shakespeare‘s Romeo + Juliet (again with Baz Luhrmann) also earned Armstrong a BAFTA for Achievement in Film Music and an Ivor Novello Award. Armstrong composed the film scores The Incredible Hulk and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Armstrong recorded and performed the album The Dolls with the Berlin laptop artist AGF and Vladislav Delay. He has worked with a wide variety of artists, including U2, Madonna, Luciano Pavarotti and Massive Attack.

Over the last decade, Armstrong has released two solo records on Massive Attack‘s label Melankolic, Piano Works on Sanctuary in 2004 and Film Works on Universal in 2005.

Armstrong has written several classical commissions for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, the Hebrides Ensemble and the Scottish Ensemble. In 2006, Armstrong collaborated with the visual artists Dalziel and Scullion for the reopening of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow with a joint exhibition called Once. In 2007, Armstrong‘s first opera premiered as part of the Scottish Opera‘s Five: 15 Operas Made in Scotland, a 15-minute opera with a libretto by Ian Rankin.

In 2007, Armstrong recorded his first classical record for EMI Classics France with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for release in 2008, which includes a violin concerto for Clio Gould. Armstrong also continues teaching as a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

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