Paul Buckmaster
| Paul Buckmaster | |
|---|---|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Paul John Buckmaster |
| Born |
June 13, 1946 London, England |
| Genres | Classical, rock, pop, social music, country, film score |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, arranger, film composer, conductor |
| Instruments | Cello, synthesizer |
| Website | www |
Paul John Buckmaster (born June 13, 1946, London, England) is a Grammy Award-winning English artist, arranger, conductor and composer.
He is best known for his orchestral collaborations with Elton John and with The Rolling Stones in the 1970s.
He began learning the cello at the age of four and graduated from the Royal Academy of Music at age 21.
Buckmaster displayed professional mastery as a cellist. However, he soon started his career as an arranger on various hit songs, including David Bowie's "Space Oddity" (1969), and contributed orchestral collaborations on a number of early albums by Elton John (1969-72) and on The Rolling Stones' album Sticky Fingers (1971).
Buckmaster also helped Miles Davis with the preparation of On the Corner (1972). He wrote the arrangements for the studio sessions, in which he also participated, at Davis' request, by humming bass lines and rhythms to lead the musicians. The arrangements he wrote were often used as a starting point to be transformed until what was being played bore no resemblance to what he had written. This was in keeping with the Stockhausian approach that Buckmaster had been discussing with Davis in the weeks leading up to the session.
Buckmaster also played with Bowie and his band in the recordings for the original soundtrack to the science fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which David Bowie starred as Thomas Jerome Newton. Buckmaster himself told in the book 60 Years of Bowie that he had played cello on the original soundtrack recordings. Also Carlos Alomar, J. Peter Robinson and others were involved. Buckmaster: "There were a couple of medium tempo rock instrumental pieces, with simple motifs and rifly kind of grooves, with a line-up of David's rhythm section (Carlos Alomar et al.) plus J Peter Robinson on Fender Rhodes and me on cello and some synth overdubs, using ARP Odyssey and Solina. There was also a piece I wrote and performed using some beautifully made mbiras (African thumb pianos) I had purchased earlier that year, plus cello, all done by multiple overdubbing." Later film-director Nicolas Roeg decided not to use the recordings but existing songs as soundtrack for the movie.
...
Wikipedia