Michael Nyman

Michael Laurence Nyman (born March 23, 1944, London) is a British minimalist composer, pianist, librettist and musicologist, perhaps best known for

Michael Laurence Nyman (born March 23, 1944, London) is a British minimalist composer, pianist, librettist and musicologist, perhaps best known for the many scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway.

Nyman studied music composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1969, he provided the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera, Down by the Greenwood Side and directed the short film Love Love Love before settling into music criticism, where he is generally acknowledged to have been the first to apply the term "minimalism" to music (in a 1968 article in The Spectator magazine about the English composer Cornelius Cardew). He wrote introductions for George Frideric Handel's Concerto Grossi, Op. 6 and conducted the most important interview with George Brecht in 1976.