Sarah Nicolls is an internationally recognised concert pianist, composer and entrepreneur, constantly pushing at the piano’s possibilities, playing with tech and reinventing the instrument itself. She has led many interdisciplinary collaborations: with composers to bring new works to life; developing new physical techniques for interactive tech with computer and sports scientists; creating shows with leading climate scientists and working with engineers to change the piano itself.

She was an Innovate UK ‘Women in Innovation’ award winner 2022-3. Her current research is focused around building a lightweight vertical grand piano, working with structural engineers Atelier One, UK composites manufacturers and design engineers and supported by Innovate UK’s Creative Catalyst programme (2025-6).

Sarah has premiered many significant works including several piano concertos written especially for her and the UK Premiere of Luciano Berio’s Piano Sonata. She has performed across the world from Brazil to Korea and is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3. She was featured on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row for her solo one-hour self-composed climate work ’12 Years’ and is called an “edgy Brit” by The Guardian.Working across the arts, academia and business, Sarah uses her unique combination of expertise and skills to advance research at a world-leading level. She has also been funded by EPSRC and AHRC, the Brunel Research Enterprise & Initiative Fund, an Athena Swan Award, Arts Council England and PRSF.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• Re-shaping the acoustic piano for new musical possibilities
• Re-structuring the acoustic piano with new materials and engineering
• Combining tech and acoustics: pushing what a pianist can do
• Performance and life: how text and music intertwine to tell the stories of our time

Sarah’s current research is focused around building a lightweight vertical grand piano, creating the ‘sound of a grand in the footprint of an upright’, in a form similar to the old cabinet pianos but enabled by modern-day engineering to be lightweight. Her PhD ‘Interacting with the Piano’ is in live electronics performance at the piano and involved the creation of several new performance environments, new works and the presentation of her research at leading conferences from the US to Norway to Korea and exchange residencies at MIT and CNMAT, San Francisco. Sarah also founded BEAM Brunel Electronic & Analogue Music Festival (2011,2012) and was Music Chair for New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference, 2014.

Teaching

Sarah has previously taught Performance Practice, Composition, Collaborative Composition, Extended Techniques and Notation and supervised and examined PhDs on interactive electronics, performance practice and experimental composition.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Sarah joined Innovate UK's Women in Innovation Roundtables to advise on how female innovators can be better supported in a broader, more inclusive innovation ecosystem. Sarah is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row for her solo one-hour self-composed climate work ’12 Years’. She has appeared in news items on the major TV channels. She is called an “edgy Brit” by The Guardian and has been interviewed in all the broadsheets. She presented for the Clore Foundation at their Governance conference, was Independent Adjudicator for the Ivor Novello Awards for 6 years, and in general uses her position to advocate for improvement and change where she sees the need. Sarah also carries out conservation work and supports artist residencies and cultural and scientific exchange at her farm in Stroud.

• Where's My Piano? || Sarah Nicolls || Watershed (YouTube)

Selected Publications

• 12 Years tour with UK’S 10 top climate scientists – The Guardian ‘Top Pick’; Front Row feature
• Practise-based PhD Thesis (by Publication), Brunel University - Nicolls, S. (2010) Interacting with the Piano – Absorbing technology into piano technique and collaborative composition: the creation of ‘performance environments’, pieces and a piano.
• Nicolls, S., with Barrett, R., Abdallah, S., Jacobson, K., Robertson, A., Stark, A., Bryan-Kinns, N., (2010). ‘Seeking Out the Spaces Between: Using Improvisation in Collaborative Composition and with Interactive Technology.’ Leonardo Music Journal, (MIT Press, Boston). Vol. 20, pp. 47–55.
• AHRC: Arts and Humanities Research Council (2007) ‘Expanding the repertoire for piano and live electronics’ – five world premieres
• Goves Piano Concerto/London Sinfonietta/Andre de Ridder - Southbank Centre (2011). The Guardian, 21.11.2011: "Things improved with the premiere of an ambitious, half-hour piano concerto by Larry Goves. In Things That Are Blue, Things That Are White, Things That Are Black, the soloist – the sparky, always imaginative Sarah Nicolls, for whom it was written – plays a microtonally tuned electric piano and a prepared piano, as well as a regular concert grand.."