Marius de Vries

Education

Marius de Vries was educated at Bedford School between 1975-1980 and then at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he studied for a degree in history.

Music producer

De Vries began his music career playing keyboards for the English 1980s pop-soul band The Blow Monkeys (with whom he has an ongoing creative relationship to this day), then spending the later part of the decade as a session keyboard-players/programmers, working with artists such as Annie Lennox, The Sugarcubes, David Bowie, D Mob, Coldcut, Cathy Dennis, The Soup Dragons, Junior Reid, Brian Eno, U2 and Lisa Stansfield.

His work with The Sugarcubes led to a key role on Björk's Debut, which marked the beginning of a long collaborative relationship with producer Nellee Hooper; the team were 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 – along with Hooper and co-composer Craig Armstrong – received the first of his two BAFTAs.

Since then de Vries has made records with, amongst others, Robbie Robertson, Neil Finn, Anja Garbarek, PJ Harvey, Melanie C, David Gray, Madonna, Perry Farrell, Skin, Darren Hayes, the Sugababes, Bebel Gilberto, Sophie Solomon, The Leaves, Elbow and Pet Shop Boys.

De Vries produced both of Rufus Wainwright's Want albums (Want One and Want Two), and appeared in the documentary, All I Want, discussing Wainwright's life. He is documented as saying that Wainwright's song, "I Don't Know What It Is", was one of the most complex production challenges he has ever faced, with its hundreds of layers of separate orchestral, choral, and vocal parts.

More recently, De Vries produced and written with Josh Groban on his multi-platinum 2007 release, Awake; mixed Rufus Wainwright's 2007 LP, Release the Stars; produced the 2008 album A Piece of What You Need by English singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson; and produced Robbie Robertson's How to Become Clairvoyant and Sa Ding Ding's eclectic Sino-European LP Harmony.

Composer/Film scores

De Vries was the Music Director of the 2001 film Moulin Rouge! and worked with Nellee Hooper on the film soundtrack of Romeo + Juliet as co-composer, programmer, and co-producer. Both of these projects won de Vries BAFTA awards, and he was awarded an Ivor Novello Award for his compositional work on the former.

He also wrote the scores for Stephan Elliott's surreal thriller Eye of the Beholder as well as Elliott's adaptation of the Noël Coward comedy Easy Virtue. The latter is notable musically for using the real singing voices of leading actors Ben Barnes, Jessica Biel, and Colin Firth to great acclaim.

In 2010, he co-wrote the score of Kick-Ass with John Murphy, Henry Jackman and Ilan Eshkeri. He co-produced, along with Tyler Bates and Zack and Deborah Snyder, and performed on the soundtrack of Snyder's 2011 film Sucker Punch.

June 2013 saw the world premiere of de Vries' score for King Kong, directed by Daniel Kramer, with a book by Craig Lucas and animatronics by Sonny Tilders, in Melbourne ahead of a Broadway mounting.

Composer/Other material

In 2008, de Vries created an hour-long modern-dance work with choreographer Rafael Bonachela titled "SquareMap of Q4," which premiered at the South Bank in London in February.