Michael den Elzen

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Michael den Elzen (born 1962) is a musician and music producer based in Melbourne, Australia. He has performed for over 25 years with many well known Australian and New Zealand artists, principally as a guitarist, and has contributed music for several Australian movie soundtracks.

1 Early career
2 1990s
3 Soundtracks
4 Other work
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Early career

Den Elzen spent his early life in Boort and Mansfield (Victoria) and started playing guitar at about 10 years of age. At the age of 15, he was performing in Melbourne with the band Expresso Bongo, who made it to the finals of the talent competition, "Safeway New Faces". This led to his playing with local bands Notorious Gentlemen and The U-Boats. At age 20, he joined Broderick Smith for his first solo album and toured in his band for about three years. He went on to perform with Venetta Fields; with Tim Finn as a guitarist on his 1985 Big Canoe tour; and with Stephen Cummings on his "This Wonderful Life" album, and Australian and U.S. tours.

In the mid 80s, den Elzen joined Melbourne band Schnell Fenster with ex-Split Enz members Phil Judd, Nigel Griggs and Noel Crombie. They released two albums, "The Sound Of Trees" and "OK Alright A-Huh O Yeah" and toured in Australia and New Zealand.

[edit] 1990s

After the break up of Schnell Fenster, den Elzen played on and co-produced Deborah Conway's 1991 successful String Of Pearls album. He went to America to perform for Peter Case (at the request of producer Mitchell Froom) on "Six Pack Of Love"; recorded and toured as bass player and musical director with Tim Finn; and toured and recorded with Richard Pleasance. He then joined Melbourne band Rebecca's Empire's for their "Way Of All Things" album.

At the end of the 1990s, he joined Australian rock outfit Deadstar and played on their final album Over The Radio.

[edit] Soundtracks

Den Elzen started doing music for films in the 80s, the first being As The Mirror Burns (1990 release date). He worked with Phil Judd and Schnell Fenster on the soundtrack for the movie Rikky and Pete (1988), and was also involved with Phil Judd on the soundtrack for The Big Steal (1990) and Mr. Reliable (1996).

He did the soundtrack to David Batty's Rodeo Road (1999) which lead to producing, recording, and co-writing the music for the TV series Bush Mechanics (2001) in Yuendumu about 300 km north-west of Alice Springs, and the soundtracks to other David Batty films, Sisters, Pearls and Mission Girls (2003) and Taylor Made (2003), as well as the TV series Inventions From The Shed (2005), all aired on the ABC.

Den Elzen also worked on a project with painter and artist David Munro called Birdbrain, whose music was used in the TV series The Secret Life of Us and in the film Ghosts of the Civil Dead (1988). Other composer credits include Trespass (2001), Beyond Sorry (2004), Bush Bikes (2003) and Us Mob (2005) by David Vadiveloo, Case 442 (2005) by C.A.A.M.A., Going Bush (2006) by SBS TV, Marree Man (2007) and the series Halal Mate (2007) both by Rebel Films, Artists At Work - David Frazer (2007) and IOU - Lloyd Rees (2007) both by ABC TV, Desert Heart (2007) by Rebel Films, and the SBS series Love's Harvest (2007) by Brian McKenzie and Rebel Films.

[edit] Other work

He produced, recorded and played most instruments on Take Me To The Place by Tess McKenna after collaborating on a song for the film Curtains For My Cabin. He played guitar and recorded with David Bridie and has also written and performed with Renée Geyer, Mark Seymour and Pound System. Other artists Michael has recorded with include Margaret Urlich and Mimori Yusa (Japan).

Den Elzen feels a strong bond with remote Central Australia and was therefore very happy to go to far north-western South Australia (Pitjantjatjara Lands) in recent years to record songs by local musicians promoting awareness of issues to do with health and well-being, supported by Nganampa Health Council in Alice Springs. The resulting CDs are called UPK2 Tilun Tilun Ta (2003), UPK3 Kunma Piti-la (2004) and UPK4 Ulkiyala (2005).

Michael continues to do session work and is currently composing for another project.