Cyborg Pianist - new album launching in September
by Caitlin Rowley
We’re delighted to release the second album of Cyborg Soloists-commissioned works, this time with NMC. Cyborg Pianist, by Zubin Kanga, is a double album featuring new pieces that use innovative technologies to swirl, melt and morph the sounds of the piano. It features compositions by Oliver Leith, Laura Bowler, Emily Howard, Shiva Feshareki, Laurence Osborn and Zubin Kanga.
This is Zubin’s debut solo album with NMC, and it will be launched in a concert featuring all six newly commissioned works. Come to the launch performance in London to hear him create 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.
Oliver Leith’s Vicentino, love you – studies for keyboard uses the cutting edge TouchKeys keyboard to create a modern version of Vicentino’s 16th-century microtonal instrument, connecting it to classic synthesizers to produce intimate choirs of brass-like sounds. Zubin Kanga’s dreamlike Hypnagogia (after Bach) uses a MiMU gloves to sculpt both the piano and synthesizer sounds in the air, in a constantly transforming exploration of the final movement of Bach’s Matthew Passion. Shiva Feshareki’s Whirling Dervishes (album version) combines spectral arpeggios on the piano with immersive turntables-generated electronics that swirl around the audience.
Laurence Osborn’s Counterfeits (Siminică) samples his own voice in a playful set of studies influenced by Romanian folk singing, combining the pitch-sliding capabilities of the TouchKeys keyboard with the piano. Emily Howard’s DEVIANCE envelops the piano in swirls of AI-generated sounds and elaborate computer-generated visuals, all using data from an experiment using EEG brain-scanning equipment to measure listener’s responses to her music. And Laura Bowler’s SHOW(ti)ME contrasts the public persona of the professional musician with their private anxieties and obsessions, in a dramatic and interdisciplinary work combining the speaking pianist with live electronics, MiMU sensor gloves, live video and social media avatars.
Cyborg Pianist is available for pre-order now at NMC.
Book tickets for the launch at Kings Place on 30 September 2023 here.