The acclaimed composer Michael Nyman has written a new piece of music for the Great North Run Cultural Programme exploring the internal physical and psychological journey of a runner taking part in the world’s largest half-marathon.

Best known for his soundtrack to the Oscar winning film The Piano and for his long collaboration with director Peter Greenaway, Nyman has previously written music inspired by sport and by science. This is the first opportunity he has had to combine both passions.

Based on collaboration with the Sports Science department at Leeds Metropolitan University, this innovative new piece will be performed by the internationally renowned Michael Nyman Band and will feature accompanying visuals by Moshine.

After premiering at The Sage Gateshead in September 2007, the Nyman Band toured across Europe before returning to perform the piece at the Barbican in London in December.

"(The piece) sprang from discussions with scientists about the physiology and experience of the runners. The piece ran with visuals by moShine; slow-motion shots and colourful abstract versions of muscle function or blood flow.

The music was a suite of 10 movements at widely varying paces. Its discontinuity at first seemed at odds with the subject, but it focused on different elements the nerve ends, the bone structure and worked towards a sense of near-stasis infused with a mix of pain and pleasure. It evoked states that music may not have visited before, at least this side of Africa." The Independent