Sarah Nicolls is an innovative pianist and composer. She invented the ‘Inside-out Piano’, a sculptural feast of an instrument which stands 2.5m tall, designed to enable ‘inside piano’ playing. She currently performs on a re-shaped 1900 Erard, using the strings as much as the keys to create layers of textured sound.
Sarah Nicolls has been innovating as a pianist since winning the British Contemporary Piano Competition in 2000. Her programme of piano re-invention continues with her company First Light Pianos, supported by Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation programme and most recently their flagship award ‘Creative Catalyst’ to develop a lightweight, fullsize, acoustic vertical grand piano. She is collaborating with world-leading structural engineer Neil Thomas and Atelier One, who have worked on structures including World Building of the Year ‘Gardens by the Bay’ in Singapore.
Sarah is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Music and Engineering at King’s College, London and was a recipient of the Arts Council England ‘Develop Your Creative Practice’ award to develop her compositional work and build a virtual instrument of her ‘Inside-Out Piano’, now available with Song Athletics.
Sarah has made shows about motherhood and climate change (working with climate scientists across the UK, ‘12 years’ was a Guardian Autumn 2020 Top Pick and was featured on BBC 4’s Front Row). She’s been a soloist in the PRSF New Music Biennial and Matthew Herbert’s 20 Pianos project, is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and has had residencies at Southbank Centre’s Collision programme, Artangel’s Library of Water in Iceland, the Arvon writing centre The Hurst and Snape Maltings Festival of New. She has premiered multiple piano concertos with orchestras like the London Sinfonietta and ASKO/Schonberg Ensemble, including special commissions from the BBC and works including Larry Goves, Richard Barrett, Niccolo Castiglioni, Wolfgang Rihm.
Combining the amazing sounds of electronic music with live piano playing, Sarah pioneered many interactive technologies over 2010-16, including muscle sensors and games controllers. Sarah founded an interactive music festival, BEAM and ran the UK’s first ever New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference, with performances by Imogen Heap and Tim Exile alongside MIT computer scientists and early pioneers like Laetitia Sonami.
Sarah also runs artists residencies on her land in Stroud, through Rattle and Brash.
