Bio:
Christopher Nupen began his broadcasting career in the Features Department of BBC Radio when he made HIGH FESTIVAL IN SIENA in 1962 for the BBC Third Programme at the invitation of Laurence Gilliam, a radio documentary of a new kind about the extraordinary summer music school of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where Nupen studied with Andrés Segovia and Alirio Diaz.
As a result of his radio programmes, he was invited by Huw Wheldon to move to television where he became the originator of a new kind of intimate classical music film - made possible for the first time by the invention of the first silent 16mm film cameras in the 1960s. His first film (DOUBLE CONCERTO) made in 1966, at the invitation of Huw Wheldon and David Attenborough with Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniel Barenboim won two international prizes (Prague and Monte Carlo) and became a seminal work.
Nupen has been described by Sir Jeremy Isaacs and Sir Denis Forman as the undoubted master of the genre he pioneered and one whose work is an enduring source of musical delight.
- Much of his work has been built on intimate friendships with leading musicians, among them Jacqueline du Pré, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, Nathan Milstein, Andrés Segovia, Isaac Stern, Evgeny Kissin and Daniil Trifonov.
- Maker of THE TROUT, the most frequently broadcast classical music film ever made.
- The first truly independent television producer in the UK and still going strong. He has made more than 80 television productions, all shown on major networks both in the UK and in Germany.
- In some ways, his later work is more adventurous than ever. His two latest films, both of a kind which he had never made before have, between them, won five international prizes.
- Worked with the same lighting cameraman, David Findlay and film editor, Peter Heelas from his first film until now.
- Given the longest retrospective that has ever been shown on British television, sixteen consecutive Saturday evenings on Channel 4 at 9.05 p.m. from the beginning of September until Christmas - described by Channel 4 as their biggest success of the year, overall.
- Maker of the top-selling classical DVD title of 2004, JACQUELINE du PRÉ IN PORTRAIT.
- Winner of DVD of the Year Award five times in 10 years.
- Through his work, Christopher Nupen has demonstrated convincingly that film and television are able to remember the artistic persona as nothing else can do and his films rank among the most enduring work that has yet been done for television. The Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas, Sir Isaiah Berlin, described some of them as being "At just about the highest level which television is capable of reaching".
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
For the Sibelius films alone Christopher Nupen's life on this earth must be judged a life worth living.
- Terence Davies (prize-winning English director and screenwriter)
If ever you wonder why all of us get so much joy from listening to sublime music performed by great musicians, just watch any of Nupen’s films to be reminded of what led us there in the first place.
- Julian Haylock. Classic FM Magazine
The most gifted music documentarian of our age
- Classic FM Magazine
Nupen is the David Attenborough of the musical jungle. He feasts with the big beasts and is unafraid of snakes.
- Norman Lebrecht
Recommendations
Recommend Christopher Nupen in order to appear here:
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).