Michael Nyman Band

The Michael Nyman Band developed out of the on-stage band that played Nyman's score for Bill Bryden's production of Goldoni's Il Campiello that opened the National Theatre, London, in October 1976. When the early music instruments were replaced with modern equivalents, the amplified Michael Nyman Band saw the light of day, with its now-familiar line-up of string quartet, saxophone trio, trumpet, horn and trombone, bass guitar and piano, from which the composer directs.

30 years since it began and the repertoire of the band includes all Nyman's film scores from The Draughtsman's Contract through The Piano to The Libertine, alongside audio/visual works like The Commissar Vanishes and The Man with a Movie Camera; 'world music' collaborations such as Sangam (with Indian masters U Shrinivas and Rajan and Sajan Misra) and The Upside-down Violin (with the Moroccan Orqestra Andalusi de Tetouan) and substantial vocal works like Six Celan Songs and Cycle of Disquietude and the 'opera' Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs.