Biography
Dan Nicholls operates from the United Kingdom as a pianist, composer, producer, sound designer, multi-instrumentalist, and educator whose work sits at the intersection of jazz, ambient electronica, vanguard classical traditions, and experimental abstraction, frequently blending these idioms. His pieces and deliberate improvisations probe perception and experience of sound while contesting established approaches to Western musical pedagogy. An original participant in London’s Loop Collective, he issued the 2011 Mirror EP and his first full-length album, Ruins, in 2013. Since 2014 he has performed with Goldie’s ensemble and since 2015 with Squarepusher’s. As a founder of the trio Strobes he delivered the widely praised Brokespeak in 2016; as a participant in the electro-improvisational jazz group Gonimoblast alongside vocalist Maja Ratkje and trumpeter Arve Henriksen, the live recording Gonimoblast Live! appeared in 2017. His WeJazz debut, Mattering and Meaning, arrived in 2021.
Born in 1985 in Stafford in the Midlands to saxophonist, educator, and writer Robin Gumbley, Nicholls took up the clarinet at age four and added piano and saxophone shortly afterward. Committed to music from an early age, he enrolled in the jazz curriculum at Birmingham Conservatoire, concentrating chiefly on piano. After graduating with honors he completed a Master’s degree with Distinction at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, then returned to the Birmingham Conservatoire faculty in 2008, where he taught until 2014.
Before resettling in England and entering the Loop Collective in 2010, he worked with ensembles throughout Europe. Within the Mirror trio alongside guitarist and composer Matt Calvert of Three Trapped Tigers and drummer and composer Dave Smith of Robert Plant and Fofoulah, the three-track self-titled EP was recorded and released in 2011. The ensuing years were devoted to performances with multiple groups, private instruction, and continued teaching at Birmingham Conservatoire.
Nicholls received a Jazzlines Fellowship from Town Hall Symphony under Performances Birmingham in 2013 and captured his solo debut, Ruins. Co-produced by Calvert, the album featured Shabaka Hutchings and Tom Challenger on clarinets, Kit Downes on organ, James Allsopp on tenor saxophone and clarinet, and Smith on drums. That same year he joined Goldie’s touring band, remaining a steady member thereafter. In 2015 he contributed to Vula Viel’s first album, Good Is Good, and recorded Can of Worms with saxophonist George Crowley, double bassist Sam Lasserson, drummer Jon Scott, and Challenger on sax. He also supplied sound design for Squarepusher’s Damogen Furies and became a core member of the live band. Late that year he participated in Chris Mapp’s experimental project Gonimoblast for two Birmingham Town Hall concerts with Ratkje and Henriksen; material from those shows formed the 2017 release Gonimoblast Live!.
From 2014 to 2016 Nicholls presented Matthew Herbert’s 20 Pianos and Steve Reich’s Piano Phase with Sarah Nicolls at festivals across the U.K. He established Strobes with guitarist and electronicist Matt Calvert and drummer Joshua Blackmore, issuing the innovative Brokespeak on Blood and Biscuits. In 2017 he took part in a performance of Reich’s Sextet at London’s Southbank Centre.
During 2018 he collaborated with drummer Dave DeRose on the first two volumes of the Agile Experiments series and joined Iain Chambers’ Re:Composed initiative, delivering live sound design and concert remixes at Cheltenham Jazz Festival and Vossa Jazz in Norway. In 2019 he was one of twenty pianists performing the world premiere of Christian Marclay’s Investigations on twenty pianos at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Nicholls appeared on Otis Sandsjö’s Y-OTIS 2 for WeJazz and joined drummer and composer Oli Steidle’s vanguard ensemble the Killing Popes, which also included Downes, for the 2020 Shhpuma debut Ego Pills and its 2021 follow-up Ego Kills. That August he released his solo WeJazz album Mattering and Meaning, centering looped acoustic piano amid electronics and field recordings captured entirely on an iPhone 6S™.
Born in 1985 in Stafford in the Midlands to saxophonist, educator, and writer Robin Gumbley, Nicholls took up the clarinet at age four and added piano and saxophone shortly afterward. Committed to music from an early age, he enrolled in the jazz curriculum at Birmingham Conservatoire, concentrating chiefly on piano. After graduating with honors he completed a Master’s degree with Distinction at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, then returned to the Birmingham Conservatoire faculty in 2008, where he taught until 2014.
Before resettling in England and entering the Loop Collective in 2010, he worked with ensembles throughout Europe. Within the Mirror trio alongside guitarist and composer Matt Calvert of Three Trapped Tigers and drummer and composer Dave Smith of Robert Plant and Fofoulah, the three-track self-titled EP was recorded and released in 2011. The ensuing years were devoted to performances with multiple groups, private instruction, and continued teaching at Birmingham Conservatoire.
Nicholls received a Jazzlines Fellowship from Town Hall Symphony under Performances Birmingham in 2013 and captured his solo debut, Ruins. Co-produced by Calvert, the album featured Shabaka Hutchings and Tom Challenger on clarinets, Kit Downes on organ, James Allsopp on tenor saxophone and clarinet, and Smith on drums. That same year he joined Goldie’s touring band, remaining a steady member thereafter. In 2015 he contributed to Vula Viel’s first album, Good Is Good, and recorded Can of Worms with saxophonist George Crowley, double bassist Sam Lasserson, drummer Jon Scott, and Challenger on sax. He also supplied sound design for Squarepusher’s Damogen Furies and became a core member of the live band. Late that year he participated in Chris Mapp’s experimental project Gonimoblast for two Birmingham Town Hall concerts with Ratkje and Henriksen; material from those shows formed the 2017 release Gonimoblast Live!.
From 2014 to 2016 Nicholls presented Matthew Herbert’s 20 Pianos and Steve Reich’s Piano Phase with Sarah Nicolls at festivals across the U.K. He established Strobes with guitarist and electronicist Matt Calvert and drummer Joshua Blackmore, issuing the innovative Brokespeak on Blood and Biscuits. In 2017 he took part in a performance of Reich’s Sextet at London’s Southbank Centre.
During 2018 he collaborated with drummer Dave DeRose on the first two volumes of the Agile Experiments series and joined Iain Chambers’ Re:Composed initiative, delivering live sound design and concert remixes at Cheltenham Jazz Festival and Vossa Jazz in Norway. In 2019 he was one of twenty pianists performing the world premiere of Christian Marclay’s Investigations on twenty pianos at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Nicholls appeared on Otis Sandsjö’s Y-OTIS 2 for WeJazz and joined drummer and composer Oli Steidle’s vanguard ensemble the Killing Popes, which also included Downes, for the 2020 Shhpuma debut Ego Pills and its 2021 follow-up Ego Kills. That August he released his solo WeJazz album Mattering and Meaning, centering looped acoustic piano amid electronics and field recordings captured entirely on an iPhone 6S™.
Albums
Singles
