A pupil of the composer of Alan Bush at the Royal Academy of Music in London and of Thurston Dart at London University, Michael Nyman abandoned composition for some years, working as a librettist, editor and music critic. He returned to composition in 1976 with incidental music adapted for National Theatre performances of Goldoni’s Il campiello, arranged for a varied body of instruments. This was the origin of his own Michael Nyman Band. He has held teaching positions at Nottingham University and at Goldsmith’s College in London.

Music
Nyman is known to a wider public for his film music, notably his collaborations with the director Peter Greenaway, music for whose Prospero’s Books became the source of a saxophone concerto called Where the Bee Dances, and Jane Campion’s The Piano, from which he derived a Piano Concerto. He has written music for a number of other films and stage productions, as well as settings of poems by Paul Celan and quartets for the Michael Nyman Band.