Michael Laurence Nyman attended the Royal Academy of Music, and later King’s College, where he studied English baroque music with Thurston Dart, graduating in 1967. He subsequently embarked upon a succesful career as a music critic, writing on everything from The Beatles to Cornelius Cardew. In 1968, in an article for The Spectator, he was the first person to apply the term “minimalism” to music. Although his collected writings were published in 2013, his articles and reviews made up much of his landmark book Experimental Music. Cage and Beyond, published in 1974. Throughout the late-1960s and 1970s, Nyman performed with several iconic ensembles dedicated to the “new music” that he described in his book, including Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra and Gavin Bryars’ Portsmouth Sinfonia, notably becoming acquainted with Brian Eno through the latter (who went on to author the preface of the reprint of Experimental Music). It was also at this time that he made his first forays into cinema, composing music for the short films of a certain Peter Greenaway.

In spite of his successes in the early-1970s, 1976 marked Nyman’s veritable debut as a musician, when composer Harrison Birtwistle (with whom he had already worked as librettist on the opera Down by the Greenwood Side in 1969) commissioned him to make arrangements of eighteenth-century Venetian songs for a production of Carlo Goldoni’s play, Il Campiello. This led to the birth of “The Ciampello Band,” renamed soon afterwards as “The Michael Nyman Band”. The group toured extensively over the coming decades, and collaborated with musicians working in a wide range of styles (from the Orquesta Andalusi de Tetouan to Evan Parker, from classical Indian musicians Rajan and Sajan Misra to Damon Albarn). Also in 1976, the record Decay Music, comprising two of Nyman’s works, was released on Eno’s label, Obscure. The album notably featured 1-100, a minimalist composition for piano lasting almost an hour, originally written for a film by Peter Greenaway.

Michael Nyman achieved broad acclaim for his score for Greenaway’s first feature film, “The Draughtsman’s Contract” (1982). The success of this film and the popularity of its soundtrack, inspired by the music of Purcell, not only solidified what was to become one of the most fruitful collaborations of all time between a composer and a filmmaker (the two would continue to work together until Prospero’s Books in 1991), but also marked the beginning of a period of intense activity for Nyman. In 1986, his first opera, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, adapted from the case study of the same name by neurologist Oliver Sacks, was premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. From 1987 to 1989, he composed his first three string quartets, and in 1990, Six Celan Songs for singer Ute Lemper. A flood of commissions followed, giving rise to La Traversée de Paris (1989), for celebrations marking the bicentenary of the French Revolution; Musique à Grande Vitesse (1993), for the inauguration of the Paris-to-Lille TGV line; and works for choreographers Lucinda Childs, Siobhan Davies, and Karine Saporta, among others.

In 1993, the film “The Piano” by Jane Campion was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Films Festival; its soundtrack, composed by Nyman, became a global sensation, selling more than 3 million copies worldwide. He later drew upon material from that film score in The Piano Concerto, the first in a series of concertos also comprising Concerto for Trombone (1994), Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings (1995), Double Concerto for Saxophone, Cello and Orchestra (1995), and Violin Concerto (2003), premiered in Hamburg by Gidon Kremer. A highly sought-after film composer (notably collaborating with Patrice Leconte, Neil Jordan, Michael Winterbottom, Andrew Niccol, and Völker Schlöndorff), Nyman has also composed several operas. Following Facing Goya (2000), a residency with the Karlsuhe Badisches Staatstheaer in 2002 gave rise to Man and Boy: Dada (premiered in 2003), based on the life of Kurt Schwitters. In 2009, Nyman collaborated with visual artist and performer/composer of electronic music Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto) on Sparkie: Cage and Beyond, an experience which affirmed his interest in interdisciplinary forms (Nyman himself occasionally directs video/cinematic works). The 2010s saw the creation of further important multimedia works: NYman with a movie camera (2010), a multiscreen installation work; and War Work: 8 songs with Film (2014), composed for the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. Also in 2014, his Symphony No. 11 was premiered (the composer has stated his intention to compose seventeen symphonies). Since 2005, Nyman has directed his own recording label, MN Records, which has released more than 60 titles to date.

In 2008, he was made a Commander of the British Empire.