Derek Nisbet specialises in creating music for unusual situations. He has composed music to mark the decommissioning of a hospital (Three Doctors), for a tight-rope walk on millennium eve (Tightrope Prelude), for theatre in an underground car-park (Wanderlust) and a livestock market (The Last Lot).
 
He is best known as composer and film-maker with the acclaimed Talking Birds, a company of artists whose aim is to perpetrate astonishing acts of transformation, and for whom he has written over 20 theatre scores. He has worked with leading aerial, dance and theatre companies including Ockham’s Razor, Foursight Theatre, Lisa Torun Dance Co, Blue Eyed Soul and Macnas.

Derek’s work has been performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London (2 letters for orchestra and film with London Musici), the Lilian Bayliss Theatre at Sadler’s Wells (Triptych, Catch), the Linbury  Studio at the Royal Opera House (Arc),  Battersea Arts Centre (Intimate History and Joy-ridden), Malmö Palladium, Sweden (See-saw), the Festival of New Eurpoean Theatre, Moscow (Intimate History), the Galway Festival, Ireland (Mysteries 2003) and the National Theatre Watch This Space Festival, London (The Whale).

His music has been heard on BBC Radio 3's Late Junction, and commissions for BBC Radio 4 have included the afternoon plays The Balloonists and Messages from a Submariner and the series Dr Pfeffer's Lonely Hearts Club.