Sarah captures wonders of nature on unique piano

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

One of the UK’s most innovative and exciting composers, Sarah Nicolls, will be in Galway next weekend performing her latest piece, a recital-story Twelve Years, about climate change. Audiences at Druid’s Mick Lally Theatre will get to see a true outlier at work when Sarah performs the piece on her inside-out piano.

Twelve Years, for which Sarah has musically recreated the sounds of melting glaciers and forest fires, is being presented by Galway Jazz Festival to celebrate World Piano Day. Sarah will be bringing her own piano to Galway for the event. It’s a special instrument, as befits a musical adventurer.

“I follow my nose and commit to whatever direction it’s going in,” she says happily of her attitude to music.

A gifted child, Sarah was sent to a specialist music school at the age of 14. There, along with other talented performers, she practised for four hours a day. At that young age, her ambition was to give a recital in London’s renowned Wigmore Hall.

She achieved that goal early in her career and was left wondering “what now?”. But not for long.

In her post-graduate year at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Sarah had specialised in new music. Once she’d graduated and begun performing professionally, she realised that what she most loved was collaborating with living composers, discovering how they wanted their work presented.

“I really loved that exchange,” she says.

Her own path to composition came after she commissioned an ‘inside-out piano’. It sounds like a bizarre instrument, but Sarah’s reasons for wanting it were entirely practical.

“I wanted to make the strings more accessible so I could play them more easily”, she says.

Playing the piano strings in addition to the keys creates a great sound but “is very hard on your back”, explains Sarah.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.