Vicky Clarke - aka SONAMB - will be premiering her Cyborg Soloists-commissioned work NEURAL MATERIALS at a performance at Modern Art Oxford on Thursday 25 April 2024. NEURAL MATERIALS is “a system for sound sculpture, modular electronics, and machine learning” based around a new steel sonic sculpture created by Clarke, and will be accompanied by live visuals by Sean Clarke. Using field recordings of cotton mill machinery, urban noise, and canal network waters made by Clarke, NEURAL MATERIALS is “a love letter from the materials of a post industrial city”.

This performance has been curated by EMPRES (Electronic Music Practice Research) in response to Frieda Toranzo Jaeger's exhibition: 'A future in the light of darkness'.

More information and free tickets available at Modern Art Oxford →

Featuring new works by three student composer-performers selected from our 2024 Call for Student Projects: Art Banymandhub, Hannah Lam and Sophia Manta. These artists have created their pieces using innovative technologies including the ROLI LUMI Keys (a keyboard with pressure and surface sensors) and ShowSync (software that creates live visuals that respond to the music).

The concert also features a duo performance by Jack Frankland and Jonathan Packham (Cyborg Soloists Postdoctoral Research Assistant) featuring the Genki Wave motion sensor ring, as well as a performance by Zubin Kanga of his own piece Hypnagogia (after Bach), featuring the piano, an analogue synthesizer and MiMU sensor gloves that can shape sounds through gesture and movement.

Part of the New Sounds Festival. Booking is essential.

More information and tickets available here →

What happens when you fuse the piano instrument with cutting-edge technology? In his performance of Shiva Feshareki, Zubin Kanga complements his piano play with immersive electronics and ambisonic surround sounds. In his own music, he distorts Bach's music with analog synthesisers and MiMU's sensor hands, while in Laura Bowler's work, he explores the complex relationship with social media through live video and audio, speech and movement theatre.

Programme

Shiva Feshareki: Whirling Dervishes

Zubin Kanga: Hypnagogia (after Bach)

Laura Bowler: SHOW(ti)ME

More information and tickets from the Flagey website →

Benjamin Tassie’s Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees uses the latest studio and keyboard technologies (including the 4D expressive ROLI Seaboard Rise 2 keyboard) to augment the sound and capabilities of some of the world’s most significant historical organs. The piece uses recordings made by the composer, of historical organs from across the UK and Europe, including the Van Straten Organ, a reconstruction of a late-Medieval Dutch organ (dating from 1479) in Amsterdam, period instruments at St Cecelia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh, and the Wingfield Organ, a reconstructed English Tudor organ. 

Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees is a monolithic, 75-minute tour de force, in which the audience is invited to immerse themselves in this sonically enveloping drone-composition. Performed by Kanga in the round using three different keyboards to trigger these organ sounds virtually, this piece of shifting and transforming tones creates a rich and enveloping sensory experience.

Full details and tickets for this free performance on the National Gallery’s website →

Swiss ensemble Contrechamps perform Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi’s Unstuck in Time. Commissioned by Zubin Kanga as part of Cyborg Soloists, Unstuck in Time was created for Distractfold Ensemble, who premiered it in London at Café OTO in October 2023. The piece uses Vochlea’s Dubler 2 voice to MIDI software.

Contrechamps will also be performing music by Zeynep Toraman, Nilufar Habibian and Denis Rollet. Full details and a link to buy tickets when available on Contrechamps’ website →

Plus-Minus Ensemble presents a programme containing three new Cyborg Soloists-commissioned works by Seán Clancy, Francesca Fargion and Jessie Marino. Francesca and Jessie are both using Vochlea’s Dubler 2 voice to MIDI software, while Seán has opted to work with Echoes’ geolocated sound app.

Seán has created soundwalks for each city of Plus-Minus’ UK tour of his piece - London, Birmingham, Edinburgh - which will be available on the free Echoes app from mid-October 2023.

These three new pieces will be complemented by a realisation of Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music.

Programme:

Jessie Marino: Seahorses [wp]
Seán Clancy: Where the Paths End [wp]
Francesca Fargion: Louise, gently falling [wp]
Anthony Braxton: Ghost Trance Music

Book tickets at MINU Festival →

Zubin Kanga performs a varied programme of works for piano and an assortment of technologies for Modulus Festival in Vancouver:

How does a pianist “play the internet”? Alexander Schubert’s WIKI-PIANO.NET is a hilarious and curious challenge that pairs piano, spoken instructions, and an internet score that can change at any time.

Laura Bowler’s SHOW(ti)ME investigates our physical and virtual selves. Over the course of the piece, you’ll witness an explosive magnification of the minutia of being a pianist, contorted through a collage of multimedia.

In Luke Nickel’s hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess, simulated roller coaster velocities become metronomic pulsations passing through wireless connections to small vibrating watches cueing a pianist to press keys that hit hammers on strings. It’s a wild – and fun! – ride.

And Zubin Kanga’s Metamemory is a dialogue between his real and artificial music memories, using a neural network created from Kanga’s own past to create music that is both monstrous and strangely beautiful.

More information and ticket bookings from Music on Main →

Plus-Minus Ensemble presents a programme containing three new Cyborg Soloists-commissioned works by Seán Clancy, Francesca Fargion and Jessie Marino. Francesca and Jessie are both using Vochlea’s Dubler 2 voice to MIDI software, while Seán has opted to work with Echoes’ geolocated sound app.

For those in London, Edinburgh and Birmingham, Seán has created soundwalks for each city which will be available on the free Echoes app a couple of weeks before the performance.

These three new pieces will be complemented by a realisation of Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music.

Programme:

Jessie Marino: Seahorses [wp]
Seán Clancy: Where the Paths End [wp]
Francesca Fargion: Louise, gently falling [wp]
Anthony Braxton: Ghost Trance Music

Book tickets at Café OTO →

Plus-Minus Ensemble presents a programme containing three new Cyborg Soloists-commissioned works by Seán Clancy, Francesca Fargion and Jessie Marino. Francesca and Jessie are both using Vochlea’s Dubler 2 voice to MIDI software, while Seán has opted to work with Echoes’ geolocated sound app.

For those in London, Edinburgh and Birmingham, Seán has created soundwalks for each city which will be available on the free Echoes app a couple of weeks before the performance.

These three new pieces will be complemented by a realisation of Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music.

Programme:

Jessie Marino: Seahorses [wp]
Seán Clancy: Where the Paths End [wp]
Francesca Fargion: Louise, gently falling [wp]
Anthony Braxton: Ghost Trance Music

Book tickets at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire →

Plus-Minus Ensemble presents a programme containing three new Cyborg Soloists-commissioned works by Seán Clancy, Francesca Fargion and Jessie Marino. Francesca and Jessie are both using Vochlea’s Dubler 2 voice to MIDI software, while Seán has opted to work with Echoes’ geolocated sound app.

For those in London, Edinburgh and Birmingham, Seán has created soundwalks for each city which will be available on the free Echoes app a couple of weeks before the performance.

These three new pieces will be complemented by a realisation of Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music.

Programme:

Jessie Marino: Seahorses [wp]
Seán Clancy: Where the Paths End [wp]
Francesca Fargion: Louise, gently falling [wp]
Anthony Braxton: Ghost Trance Music

Free event. Book tickets at Edinburgh College of Art →

Zubin Kanga performs a programme of pieces exploring technology's ability to augment musical instruments and composition. The programme features Answer Machine Tape, 1987 along with other pieces exploring futuristic new technologies and new pianistic possibilities. Kanga’s own Steel on Bone uses motion sensor gloves and knitting needles to generate great surges of cavernous sound. Vicentino, love you (Oliver Leith) is a set of microtonal pieces for keyboard and synthesiser - and DEVIANCE (Emily Howard), a tribute to Ada Lovelace, uses brain data and machine learning to explore connections between music and mind. All four works were commissioned as part of Kanga’s multi-year music and research project, Cyborg Soloists. Vicentino, love you and DEVIANCE appear on Kanga’s latest album, Cyborg Pianist (NMC Recordings).

More information and bookings on the Oxford Contemporary Music website →

Clarinettist Heather Roche and accordionist Eva Zöllner perform Joe Snape’s Signs of Life in Belgrade, Serbia at the Composers’ Association of Serbia’s ‘Tribune of Composers’. Signs of Life was commissioned by Cyborg Soloists for the duo, and premiered by them in April 2023. Snape’s piece will be performed alongside other works for clarinet and accordion by Julie Zhu, Miharu Ogura, and Sina Fani Sani.

The concert is free. See the full programme of the festival here →

Another Sky is a new London-based festival celebrating experimental music from the SWANA (South West Asia & North Africa) region and diaspora - 2023 is our first edition. Join us in listening, in watching, in dancing and in connecting for two days and three nights. We’ll present composed, improvised and electronic music; short films and moving-image works; six new commissions; a film workshop and an independent label & publisher fair. Another Sky is co-directed by Sam Salem أسامة سالم (composer; co-founder Distractfold Ensemble; RNCM) and Emily Moore (Southern Bird artist management & production; former co-director Kammer Klang).

Over the course of the 3 day festival (Sep 29 - Oct 1st) Distractfold will be premiering four new works, including Unstuck In Time by Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi کیمیا کوچک زاده یزدی, commissioned by Zubin Kanga for Cyborg Soloists.

See the full festival programme and buy tickets from Café OTO here

Pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga launches his debut solo album with NMC, Cyborg Pianist, in a concert featuring all six newly commissioned works, using new technologies to swirl, melt and morph the sounds of his piano and keyboards. Across these works, Kanga creates distinct and unique sound worlds by blending the piano with immersive electronics, dialoguing with synthesizers, bending pitch with new keyboard instruments, shaping sound in the air using sensor gloves, playing with the audio-visual sonification of brain data, and duetting with AI-generated sounds.

More information and tickets from the Kings Place website →

Programme

Oliver Leith Vicentino, love you – studies for keyboard ('L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica)

Zubin Kanga Hypnagogia (after Bach) (excerpt)

Shiva Feshareki Whirling Dervishes (album version)

Laurence Osborn Counterfeits (Siminică)

Emily Howard DEVIANCE

Laura Bowler SHOW(ti)ME

Zubin Kanga performing Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987

Zubin Kanga will be performing Philip Venables’ extraordinary and moving Answer Machine Tape, 1987, for solo piano and Augmented Instruments Lab’s KeyScanner technology at Musica Festival in Strasbourg.

Read about Venables’ powerful work about the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York here →

For more information and tickets, visit the Musica Festival website.

Zubin will also be performing this piece at 7pm on the same day.

Zubin Kanga performing Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987

Zubin Kanga will be performing Philip Venables’ extraordinary and moving Answer Machine Tape, 1987, for solo piano and Augmented Instruments Lab’s KeyScanner technology at Musica Festival in Strasbourg.

Read about Venables’ powerful work about the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York here →

For more information and tickets, visit the Musica Festival website.

Zubin will also be performing this work at 10pm on the same day.

A vibrant programme of musician-technology interactions in which performing bodies, musical instruments and novel hardware and software collide, offering three manifestations of the modern-day musical cyborg. Featuring the winners of our 2022 Call for Collaborative Music Projects, Kathryn Williams and Ed Cooper, and Ben Jameson and Harry Matthews.

Drones and tones merge with the human pulse, both heard and imagined, in Fourfold by flautist Kathryn Williams and composer Ed Cooper. Using Soundbrenner’s vibrating metronomes and their own heartbeats, the duo weave a dreamy soundscape with alto flute, electric guitar and fixed media. Active listening combines with performance and spoken word, constructing an augmented, bodily instrument.

Composer-guitarist Ben Jameson and composer-pianist Harry Matthews’ Aeolian Fantasy forms a digital aeolian harp as they feed Vochlea’s audio-to-MIDI software Dubler 2 with prerecorded and live wind sounds. Beautiful and uncanny microtonal harmonies fill the space from small speakers, augmented by live performance on acoustic guitar and synthesisers.

Celebrated Canadian clarinettist Heather Roche presents a poignant set of works for low clarinets and electronics. ‘Droning falsities (for one’s self)’ (2019), composed by Mark Dyer, uses unstable performance techniques and prerecorded murmurs to conjure the ghost of Renaissance composer Guillaume Dufay. In tribute to Robert Phillips, who tragically passed away recently, Heather will perform ‘Rutaceae’ (2015) in which the distinction between live instrument and tape part is held, beguilingly, at a knife’s edge.

Full details and bookings from the IKLECTIK website →

Nonclassical presents the launch event for Zubin Kanga’s new album of Cyborg-Soloists-commissioned pieces, Machine Dreams. The album - and this performance - explores the intersection between music, technology and virtuosity, with new music for augmented keyboards, synthesizers, electronic sensor gloves, AI-generated sounds, and more interactive technologies. The night will feature new commissions by Alex Paxton, CHAINES, Tansy Davies, Nwando Ebizie, Robin Haigh, Alex Groves, Jasmin Kent Rodgman, Ben Nobuto, Amble Skuse and Zubin himself.

Zubin’s performance is paired with a set by Zöllner-Roche duo in which accordionist Eva Zöllner and clarinettist Heather Roche will perform Joe Snape’s piece for Cyborg Soloists, Signs of Life, ‘a quirky, pop-infused work that begins in melancholy but by the end radiates hope and joy’ as well as work by American composer Julie Zhu.

For full details and tickets, visit the Nonclassical website →

Join Zubin Kanga as he makes full use of the audio-visual capabilities of the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub at Jesus College to showcase brand new, technology-focussed music that has not yet been heard in Oxford. He will perform on a range of instruments, including digital instruments, synthesizers, and a traditional piano.

The programme includes Alexander Schubert’s WIKI-PIANO.NET, Alex Groves’ Single Form (Swell), Luke Nickel’s hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess and Zubin’s own Hypnagogia (after Bach).

Full details and tickets here →

Kathryn Williams and Ed Cooper, one of the duos selected from our Call for Collaborative Music Projects, will be performing their new work for flute and guitar at one of the University of Leeds’ ‘concerts+’ series.

Commissioned by Cyborg Soloists, Williams and Cooper’s new piece uses Soundbrenner wearable metronomes and stethoscope microphones created especially for the work. The performance will be livestreamed, but if you are able to attend in person, there’ll be an opportunity for audience members to engage with the materials after the performance.

Free concert, no booking required - full details can be found on the University of Leeds website

View the livestream on YouTube →

Zubin Kanga performs Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Paris Autumn Festival.

Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is a major new work for piano and multimedia by Philip Venables, created in collaboration with dramatist Ted Huffman and programmer Simon Hendry. It focuses on New York visual artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death of Peter Hujar – his former lover, close friend and fellow artist – from an AIDS-related illness in 1987. The work’s focal point is Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape from the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers, exploring his life, that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.

Answer Machine Tape, 1987 uses new sensor technology – the Keyscanner created by the Augmented Instruments Laboratory – allowing the piano to function not just as an acoustic instrument, but as a typewriter to transcribe, comment on and illuminate the messages. This is a work that is enigmatic and meditative, opening a door for the audience and beckoning them to take a step inside. We eavesdrop into a private world; messages are transliterated into a musical fabric, becoming character studies, becoming reflections on a community, becoming attempts to decipher meaning. Transcription, and its failure in the face of extreme difficulty, becomes a poignant metaphor for the AIDS crisis and its devastating effect on a generation.

For tickets (from 9 September 2022) and links to the full festival programme, visit the Paris Autumn website

Zubin Kanga presents the premiere performance of Laura Bowler’s SHOW(ti)ME, an investigation into the multiplicities of the physical and virtual self through the lens of piano performance and practice. Excavating the intimate relationship between performance and instrument, SHOW(ti)ME gradually draws back the mask of performance, revealing the performer’s vulnerabilities through an explosive magnification of the minutia of piano practice.

The performing self is extended and contorted through a collaging of multimedia practices: live camera, pre-recorded camera, MiMU gloves, live and fixed electronics.

Free event. See the hcmf// website for full details here →

Cyborg Soloists’ Director, pianist Zubin Kanga presents the UK premiere of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at hcmf// 2022. Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is a major new work for piano and multimedia by Philip Venables, created in collaboration with dramatist Ted Huffman and programmer Simon Hendry. It focuses on New York visual artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death of Peter Hujar – his former lover, close friend and fellow artist – from an AIDS-related illness in 1987. The work’s focal point is Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape from the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers, exploring his life, that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.

Answer Machine Tape, 1987 uses new sensor technology – the Keyscanner created by the Augmented Instruments Laboratory – allowing the piano to function not just as an acoustic instrument, but as a typewriter to transcribe, comment on and illuminate the messages. This is a work that is enigmatic and meditative, opening a door for the audience and beckoning them to take a step inside. We eavesdrop into a private world; messages are transliterated into a musical fabric, becoming character studies, becoming reflections on a community, becoming attempts to decipher meaning. Transcription, and its failure in the face of extreme difficulty, becomes a poignant metaphor for the AIDS crisis and its devastating effect on a generation.

For tickets (from 9 September 2022) and links to the full festival programme, visit hcmf//’s website

Zubin Kanga performs Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at November Music in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands.

This major new work for piano and multimedia has been created in collaboration with dramatist Ted Huffman, programmer Simon Hendry and Zubin Kanga. It focuses on New York visual artist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death of Peter Hujar, Wojnarowicz’s close friend and fellow artist, from AIDS-related illness in 1987. It uses a transcription of Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape in the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers, to explore not just his life, but that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.

Using the KeyScanner, new sensor technology from the Augmented Instruments Lab, the piano will function both as an acoustic instrument and as a typewriter to transcribe sections of tape onto the screen, as well as acting as a controller to add electronic sound and light, combining in an integrated solo multimedia performance.

The result is a powerful and poignant work that reflects on queer history and what it is to be a queer person today.

Visit the November Music website for full details of the performance and ticket sales

Read Peter Page’s review of this performance in The Cusp →

Zubin Kanga performs the UK premiere of Neil Luck’s 40-minute work for piano, electronics, two videos and MiMU sensor gloves, Whatever Weighs You Down. An intense and bizarre meditation on weights, senses, inertia and dreams, Whatever Weighs You Down features Deaf performance artist Chisato Minamimura as an onscreen co-performer in an intense gestural dialgoue with Kanga’s piano and sonified movements using the MiMU gloves. Composer-performer James Oldham also appears as a chaotic second onscreen protagonist.

World premieres by Nina Whiteman and Nwando Ebizie, combining the piano with a Moog synthesizer and sensor technology from Movesense and Holonic Systems, alongside Kanga’s own Steel on Bone, and a solo performance by Luck complete the programme.

Nina Whiteman – Cybird Cybird (World Premiere)
Nwando Ebizie – I Will Fix Myself (Just Circles) (World Premiere)
Zubin Kanga – Steel on Bone
Neil Luck – New Work (World Premiere)
Neil Luck – Whatever Weighs You Down (UK Premiere)

Visit Cafe Oto’s website for full details and ticket sales →

Zubin Kanga premieres new works by Nina Whiteman and Alex Groves alongside Luke Nickel’s hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess, his own Steel on Bone and Alexander Schubert’s WIKI-PIANO.NET in this programme for Music in the Round.

The programme uses a range of technologies from Cyborg Soloists industry partners. Whiteman uses Movesense sensors with Holonic Systems software alongside AI-manipulated field recordings from her daily commute to explore alien sonic environments through gesture. Groves uses ROLI’s LUMI keyboards, Nickel uses Soundbrenner’s haptic metronomes to feed tempi from rollercoasters onscreen to Zubin Kanga as he performs at the piano. Kanga’s Steel on Bone uses the motion-sensing capabilities of MiMU gloves to manipulate sounds from inside the piano.

And, finally, Alexander Schubert’s WIKI-PIANO.NET from 2018 explores the nature of internet culture with a score that can be shaped by audience contributions. Make your own contribution to this performance by adding or editing material for this piece at wiki-piano.net.

Nina Whiteman - cybird cybird (world premiere)

Alex Groves - Single Form (Swell) (world premiere)

Zubin Kanga - Steel on Bone (2021)

Luke Nickel - hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess (2022)

Alexander Schubert - WIKI-PIANO.NET (2018)

Book tickets from Music in the Round’s website →

A programme of music by CoMA’s Sheffield, Manchester & Allcomers participants including work by Cyborg Soloists composer Mark Dyer.

Join CoMA (Contemporary Music for All) for this programme of works that interweaves explorations of the human voice into the unique colours of an open ensemble. CoMA Sheffield and CoMA Manchester are joined by composer Mark Dyer (of the Cyborg soloists project), and will present his piece Mensura for voices and Soundbrenner wearable metronomes alongside other works by Sheffield and Manchester based composers, including a world premiere by Peter Bourne.

The programme will also include two pieces by the CoMA Allcomers Ensemble made up of players from all around Sheffield who have joined the ensemble for the day.

Free conceret. Full details, including how to participate in the CoMA Allcomers Ensemble, on the Music in the Round website →

Zubin Kanga premieres Neil Luck’s Whatever Weighs You Down, a multimedia work for piano, video, electronics, and the MiMU sensor glove, with which Kanga can trigger live electronics and visuals using techniques that have parallels to the ways audiences with disabilities interact with multimedia. Deaf performance artist Chisato Minamimura, who integrates British Sign Language into her performances, participates on a screen as a parallel performer. Whatever Weighs You Down both disorientates and clarifies by exposing to the audience the slipperiness, truths, and fallacies of multimedia constructions.

Part of Gaudeamus Festival’s Final Night programme. Tickets available from the Gaudeamus website.

Josh Spear and Caitlin Rowley’s piece for solo percussionist and live electronics, From the Exquisite Dark, premieres as part of ‘Visitors - Acts ’n Sounds 09’, a performance of works by Bastard Assignments in collaboration with Ensemble Garage, including premieres by Edward Henderson and Timothy Cape, as well as pieces by Natacha Diels and Eduardo Frank.

From the Exquisite Dark uses the low-latency audio response of a Bela Mini nanocomputer with multichannel expansion to respond to signals from contact microphones attached to an assortment of objects. As percussionist Yuka Ohta drags, strokes, hits and swirls various objects, the sounds we hear from them are not the sounds we expect. The piece uses the uncanny effect of this cognitive dissonance to playfully consider ideas about the cycle of consumerism.

More information available about the performance (in German) on the Facebook event here →

From the Exquisite Dark was commissioned by Ensemble Garage and has been created with the support of Cyborg Soloists.