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Steve Nieve
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Steve Nieve (born Steven Nason, 19 February 1958, in London, England) is a keyboardist, best known for his work with Elvis Costello.
The Royal College of Music student joined Costello's backing band The Attractions in 1977. He played on most of Costello's projects over the next ten years, including the albums This Year's Model (1978), Imperial Bedroom (1982), and Blood & Chocolate (1986). He wrote the material on The Attractions' solo album, Mad About The Wrong Boy, under the name Norman Brain, in collaboration with his wife, Fay Hart. (The back of Trust's faux movie poster has Nieve "as Steve Hart".)
In the mid 1980s, Costello began to work less frequently with The Attractions and stopped working with them entirely between 1987 and 1993. During this period, Nieve focused on session work for other artists (The Neville Brothers, Hothouse Flowers, Graham Parker, Squeeze, Tim Finn, Kirsty MacColl, Madness) and led the house band on Jonathan Ross' UK TV series The Last Resort.
Costello reunited The Attractions for 1994's album Brutal Youth. Although the reunion was relatively short-lived (they split again in 1996), the Costello/Nieve collaborations never stopped. They have toured as a duo, and Nieve has contributed keyboards to all of Costello's albums since the mid-1990s, including 1998's Burt Bacharach collaboration Painted From Memory, 2001's Anne-Sofie von Otter collaboration For The Stars, and 2003's North. In 2001, Costello formed a new backing band consisting of Nieve, Attractions drummer Pete Thomas, and bassist Davey Faragher.
The band was subsequently dubbed The Imposters. Elvis Costello & The Imposters have toured extensively and released the albums When I Was Cruel (2002), Cruel Smile (2003) The Delivery Man (2004), and The River In Reverse (2006) with Allen Toussaint.
In addition to his work with Costello, Nieve has released several solo albums, including Keyboard Jungle (1983), Playboy (1987), It's Raining Somewhere (1996), Mumu (2001), and Windows (2004).
Nieve's opera, Welcome To The Voice, a collaboration with Muriel Téodori, was performed in New York in 2000. A recording of the opera was made in 2005 for future release.
In recent years Nieve has lived in France with Téodori. In 2003 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Elvis Costello & The Attractions.