Francis Monkman, who has died of cancer aged 73, was a gifted classically trained musician who brought his technical skills and eclectic tastes to a rich variety of projects. These included stints with Curved Air and with the guitarist John Williams’s classical-crossover band Sky, as well as collaborations with artists including Renaissance, Kate Bush, Brian Eno and the Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera. Monkman’s much-admired soundtrack for John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday (1980) was an integral part of the film’s success, and prompted him to leave Sky to concentrate on other soundtracks. His playing also featured on numerous film scores, including Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Live and Let Die (1973).
Part of Britain’s late-1960s progressive rock boom, Curved Air mixed rock music with various classical influences, and gave Monkman his first taste of popular success. When the band started, he was still in the middle of his classical music degree. However, he was beginning to feel the lure of rock music, and while his main instrument was keyboards, he also learned to play guitar, partly inspired by the fretboard pyrotechnics of Jimi Hendrix.
“Curved Air started in about 1969,” he recalled. “That dovetailed with the end of studies at the Royal Academy of Music. I had to decide between the second half of my [bachelor of music] and going on the road. It wasn’t a very hard decision.”
Curved Air evolved out of Sisyphus, which had been formed by Monkman and the violinist Darryl Way, who had studied at the Royal College of Music. The line-up was completed by the drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa, the bass player Rob Martin and the pianist Nick Simon. They were subsequently joined by the vocalist Sonja Kristina, while Simon quit. At Monkman’s instigation they adopted their new name, derived from the American minimalist composer Terry Riley’s composition A Rainbow in Curved Air. Monkman had become a Riley fan when he played in the first London performance of the composer’s piece, In C.
In 1970 Curved Air became the first British group signed to Warner Bros. Their debut album, Air Conditioning, was released in November that year. Its accomplished and novel mix of rock songs and classically influenced pieces, notably the rock-baroque hybrid Vivaldi, helped it reach No 8 on the UK album chart.
It accrued extra publicity by being one of the earliest picture discs, though was subsequently reissued on conventional vinyl. The group’s defining Second Album (1971) reached No 11 on the chart, and contained their best-remembered song, Back Street Luv, a No 4 UK single, providing them with an appearance on Top of the Pops.
Their third album, Phantasmagoria (1972), was praised in many quarters as their finest hour, though it only made it to No 20, and it marked the end of Monkman’s stint with the group, not least because his enthusiasm for extended musical improvisations jarred badly against Way’s fastidious perfectionism. “Darryl and I respect each other’s work, but we don’t really see eye to eye on most things,” he said. Also, despite their success, the group was struggling financially. In 1974 Monkman rejoined them temporarily for a tour, with the objective of paying off Curved Air’s tax liabilities, which was recorded for the album Live (1975).
Monkman was born in Hampstead, north London, the son of the BBC producer and scriptwriter Kenneth Monkman and his wife, Vita (nee Duncombe Mann). Both parents were music lovers, and they had a harpsichord made for their son.
After attending Hill House prep school in Knightsbridge (where Prince Charles was a contemporary), Monkman went to Westminster school, where he studied harpsichord and organ. While still there he would sometimes play the organ at morning services in Westminster Abbey. Then he went to the Royal Academy of Music, where his expertise on the harpsichord won him the Raymond Russell prize. He also joined Neville Marriner’s Academy of St Martin in the Fields chamber ensemble.
After he left Curved Air, Monkman exercised his talents in a variety of directions. He played on Renaissance’s album Prologue (1972), and worked with Lynsey de Paul and Al Stewart. In 1976 he teamed up with Eno and Manzanera to form 801. The band only played three shows, but the resulting album, 801 Live, became a cult success internationally.
He played organ and harpsichord on Kate Bush’s album Lionheart, with the Shadows on their 20 Golden Greats tour in 1977, and played keyboards on Voyage, the solo album by the Shadows drummer Brian Bennett. In between, he found time to give classical harpsichord recitals.
Monkman was recruited to Sky after he had played on Williams’s solo album Travelling (1978), and he stayed with the group long enough to feature on their albums Sky and Sky 2 (1979 and 1980). His musical expertise and wide-ranging tastes dovetailed perfectly with the group’s adventures in rock, classical and jazz styles, and their debut album reached No 9 in the UK, while Sky 2 made it to No 1, also selling strongly around the world. Monkman was one of the band’s main composers, contributing, among other pieces, the four-part, 17-minute suite Fifo to Sky 2. He appeared on Top of the Pops again when Sky’s single Toccata – an arrangement of Bach prominently featuring Monkman’s harpsichord – reached No 5 in the UK.
In his later years Monkman released albums including Dweller on the Threshold (1981) and 21st Century Blues (2001). In 2021 he revisited his long-standing passion for organ and harpsichord by releasing The Bach Family, a collection of organ pieces by JS Bach and other members of the Bach musical dynasty.
In the 70s he married Uiko Chida, but they subsequently divorced. Their daughter, Maya, died in a road accident. Monkman is survived by his partner, Christine.
• Anthony Francis Keigwin Monkman, composer and musician, born 9 June 1949; died 12 May 2023
