Curved Air

Curved Air emerged as one of the most theatrically ambitious outfits swept up in Britain’s late-1960s progressive-rock wave. Violinist Darryl Way, who had trained at the Royal College of Music, joined keyboard player Francis Monkman and drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa—both previously of Sisyphus—to launch the ensemble in the first months of 1970. Once bassist Robert Martin completed the lineup, the group took its name from avant-garde composer Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air, a recording whose experimental spirit would color much of the band’s early material.

The quartet first assembled to support producer Galt McDermott’s stage musical Who the Murderer Was. After the show closed, McDermott recommended adding vocalist Sonja Kristina, an artist he had already directed in the British production of Hair. With Kristina aboard, Curved Air embarked on a warmly received U.K. tour and, that same summer, became the first British act signed to Warner Bros.

November 1970 saw the release of the band’s debut album, Air Conditioning, an ambitious set dramatically packaged as rock’s inaugural picture disc. Balancing assertive hard-rock tracks with pieces steeped in classical technique, the record climbed to number eight on the British chart. Although the accompanying single “It Happened Today” made little impact, Curved Air entered 1971 poised on the brink of major success.

Bassist Ian Eyre replaced Martin, and the following summer the incandescent “Back Street Love” surged to number four, outpacing the plainly titled Second Album. That follow-up proved less commanding than its predecessor, stalling at number eleven, while the non-album single “Sarah’s Concern” passed almost unnoticed.

Spring 1972 brought the band’s masterpiece, Phantasmagoria, which contained the striking “Marie Antoinette” and Monkman’s extended “Phantasmagoria” suite. Despite its quality, the album peaked only at number twenty, and internal tensions—already visible in the record’s division between Kristina and Way’s rock-oriented material and Monkman’s more grandiose contributions—led to the group’s dissolution. Way formed Wolf, Pilkington-Miksa joined Kiki Dee’s band, and Monkman turned to session work.

Kristina and bassist Mike Wedgwood, who had taken Eyre’s place on Phantasmagoria, retained the Curved Air name and recruited drummer Jim Russell, guitarist Kirby Gregory, and violinist-synth player Eddie Jobson. This configuration issued Air Cut in spring 1973, yet the album marked a final effort; a second set, Love Child, was recorded but shelved when the band disbanded that summer (it finally appeared in 1990). Jobson quickly replaced Eno in Roxy Music, while Wedgwood joined Caravan.

Kristina initially planned a solo career, but in autumn 1974 the original core—Kristina, Way, Monkman, and Pilkington-Miksa—reconvened for a limited British tour. With bassist Phil Kohn added, the reunion captured the group’s earlier intensity on the live album Curved Air Live. The old fractures soon resurfaced, however, and when Curved Air reappeared in autumn 1975 only Kristina and Way remained, joined by guitarist Mick Jacques, bassist John Perry (later replaced by Greenslade’s Tony Reeves), keyboardist Pete Woods, and drummer Stewart Copeland.

Neither Midnight Wire nor Airborne, issued over the next year, restored the band’s earlier momentum; both offered only brief echoes of its pioneering spark, even as Kristina seemed constrained by the surrounding anonymity. Way exited after one last unsuccessful single, a buoyant reading of “Baby Please Don’t Go,” and was replaced by Alex Richman; the group nevertheless folded in early 1977. Copeland promptly entered the Police, Reeves revived Greenslade, and Kristina at last pursued her postponed solo path.

Sporadic returns with Darryl Way revived the Curved Air name: the 1984 single “Renegade” preceded a brief 1988 tour, and in 1990 the original Kristina–Way–Monkman–Pilkington-Miksa quartet performed again at London’s Town & Country 2. That concert, opening with the new song “20 Years On,” was documented on Alive 1990.

Thereafter the band’s catalog received renewed attention through Collector's Choice reissues of the first three albums and the BBC Sessions anthology, which preserves Way’s otherwise unavailable “Thinking on the Floor” alongside broadcast recordings from 1970, 1971, and 1976.