Max Richter

Max Richter is a German pianist and score composer born in Hamelin, Germany, in 1966 and raised in Bedford, United Kingdom. He is classically trained and studies composition at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Academy of Music, with further study in Florence with Luciano Berio. His work sits between contemporary classical music, post-minimalism, ambient and electronic styles, and he has been an influential figure in the meeting of classical and alternative popular music since the early 2000s.

Early work and Piano Circus

After his studies, Richter co-founds the contemporary classical ensemble Piano Circus. He remains with the group for ten years, commissioning and performing music by minimalist composers including Arvo Pärt, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe and Steve Reich. The ensemble releases five albums on Decca/Argo.

Solo recordings and collaborations

Richter records seven solo albums and also works extensively as a producer, collaborator and composer for other artists. In 1996 he collaborates with Future Sound of London on Dead Cities, first as a pianist and then on several tracks, including co-writing the track “Max”. He works with the group for two years and also contributes to The Isness and The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness. In 2000 he works with Roni Size on the Reprazent album In the Møde.

He produces Vashti Bunyan’s album Lookaftering in 2005 and Kelli Ali’s Rocking Horse in 2008. He also collaborates with performance, installation and media artists, and his music appears widely in film and television.

Film, television and theatre

Richter composes a large number of screen soundtracks. In 2007 he writes the score for Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, replacing the usual orchestral approach with synth-based sounds and winning the European Film Award for Best Composer. He also scores Henry May Long, Die Fremde, How to Die in Oregon, Impardonnables, Lore, Disconnect, The Congress, Morgan and Miss Sloane. His music is used in Shutter Island, and pieces from Memoryhouse and The Blue Notebooks recur in later screen work.

His composition “On the Nature of Daylight” is used in several productions, including Shutter Island, HBO’s Luck and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, where it opens and closes the film. Other music appears in BBC Two’s Dive, the BBC documentary Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution, and trailers for Prometheus, To the Wonder and J. Edgar. He also writes the original soundtrack for HBO’s The Leftovers and the full score for BBC One’s Taboo.

For theatre and ballet, Richter writes the score to Infra for a Royal Ballet-commissioned collaboration with Wayne McGregor and Julian Opie, staged at the Royal Opera House in 2008. In 2011 he composes a chamber opera based on David Eagleman’s Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, choreographed by McGregor and premiered at the Royal Opera House Linbury Studio Theatre in 2012. He later continues his work with McGregor on Kairos and on a planned full-length ballet for the Royal Opera House season.

Other collaborations and installations

Richter contributes music to The National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Macbeth, starring Alan Cumming, which opens at Lincoln Centre and moves to Broadway. The company has already used his piece “Last Days” in Black Watch. He also contributes to Darren Almond’s film installation The Anthropocene at White Cube in London, and to Random International’s installations Future Self and Rain Room, presented in Berlin, London and New York. His piece “On the Nature of Daylight” and other works have become recurring elements in both cinema and television, and he is associated with the label Studio Richter.