Collaborators
sarah nicolls -piano
Commissions
Biography
Sarah Nicolls is a UK-based experimental pianist and inventor, in 2008 building her own piano to resolve the issue of how to get inside the piano more easily. Called the ‘Inside-out piano’, she has since been creating new pieces for the instrument with various additional pieces of technology such as her ‘Wii wheel’ and MIDI-controlled motors. Sarah also works with interactive technologies and last year developed a new piece with EMG sensors, written by Atau Tanaka (Culture Lab). In other academic partnerships, she has worked with Nick Gillian at SARC to begin developing a motion capture system of control at the piano and with Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (University of Huddersfield) to create a half-hour interactive piece using the PianoBar.
Sarah also continues with her busy concert career, giving recent world premieres such as Larry Goves’ Piano Concerto and Richard Barrett’s Mesoptamia, both with the London Sinfonietta. She is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and has recently written an article on Improvising with live electronics for the Leonardo Music Journal (LMJ20).
Sarah is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University and has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Brunel Research Initiative and Enterprise Fund (BRIEF). See www.sarahnicolls.com for more details.