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. Her company Future Piano is currently building a new lightweight version using carbon fibre and aerospace engineering, collaborating with the extraordinary piano builder David Klavins.
During the pandemic, Sarah toured her climate work ’12 Years’ and ‘Ballad of a Changing World’. She is now writing new music and learning how to be a farmer in Gloucestershire too.
Sarah has been a frequent soloist on the new music scene, performing in events such as the PRSF New Music Biennial, Matthew Herbert’s 20 Pianos project, six world premiere piano concertos with London Sinfonietta. She is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and features on several CDs. She also makes music, theatre and installations and curates, founding her own festival of interactive electronic music.
Since 2017, she has had artist 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.
