On April 20, we’ll be releasing our latest album, Zubin Kanga’s Machine Dreams. Read on to find out about Zubin and the composers involved in the album, as well as the artists featured in our album launch concert at London’s Rich Mix on Fri 21 April.
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the performers…
Image c/o Raphael Neal
ZUBIN kanga
Zubin Kanga is a pianist, composer, and technologist. For over a decade, he has been at the forefront of curating and creating interdisciplinary musical programmes that seek to explore and redefine what it means to be a performer through interactions with new technologies.
In 2020, following his appointment as Lecturer in Musical Performance and Digital Arts at Royal Holloway University, Kanga was awarded a £1.4 million UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship to fund his latest multi-year project Cyborg Soloists, which is unlocking new possibilities in composition and performance through interactions with AI and machine learning; interactive visuals and VR; motion and biosensors, and new hybrid instruments.
Zubin will be performing the newly-commissioned works which make up Machine Dreams at Rich Mix on April 21.
Image c/o Sam Walton
zöllner-roche duo
Accordionist Eva Zöllner and clarinettist Heather Roche are accompanied by electronics and projections for a set pairing Joe Snape’s Signs of Life – a quirky, pop-infused work that begins in melancholy but by the end radiates hope and joy – with American composer Julie Zhu’s theatrical and surreal Nadir aux Pommes, inspired by the poet Anne Sexton. It’s full of little strange repetitions, odd interactions, and a lot of fish.
blasio kavuma
Blasio Kavuma is a composer, arranger and curator based in London, regularly collaborating with artists on film, visual art and performance art projects. His work has been performed by ensembles and soloists in the UK, US and Japan, and his music has featured on BBC Radio 3.
the composers…
ALEX PAXTON
Alex Paxton (1990) is a composer based in the UK published by Ricordi "A riotous overabundance of love and rage..an extraordinary experience” The Wire. Portrait albums include: MUSIC for BOSCH PEOPLE 2021 (NMC/BRC), iLOLLI-POP 2022 (non-classical) HAPPY MUSIC for ORCHESTRA 2023 (Delphian). He is recipient of Ernst Von Siemens, Hindemith Prize and an Ivor Novello “packed with life force unlike anything else”. He as written for many ensembles including LSO, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien. He also performs as a jazz trombone soloist and is a contributor to John Zorn’s Arcana X.
Car-Pig, is inspired by joy and manic energy.
Image c/o Rui Camilo
TANSY DAVIES
Tansy Davies’ music has been described as both 'sleek, hot, earthy' and 'transparent, brazenly beautiful'; it has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Ensemble intercontemporain, and Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and at numerous international festivals. Between Worlds, an operatic response to 9/11, was premiered by English National Opera; her chamber opera Cave was premiered with Mark Padmore, Elaine Mitchener, and London Sinfonietta. Recent projects include Forest, a concerto for four horns premiered by the Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen, Nightingales: Ultra-Deep Field for Arditti Quartet, and a residency at Concertgebouw Amsterdam culminating in the ensemble piece Soul Canoe. In 2022 Orkest de Ereprijs and Konstantyn Napolov premiered Stone Codes for percussion and ensemble.
Star-Way, is dedicated to the memory of Mira Calix.
Image c/o Chelsea Browne
ALEX GROVES
Alex Groves is an Ivor Novello-nominated composer and curator working across contemporary classical and electronic music. Current projects include commissions for Resolution Festival and the Richard Thomas Foundation, and a collaboration with composer/performer Philipp Rumsch. Other recent work includes commissions for Kate Ellis, Zubin Kanga, and Ben Goldscheider, and performances in Berlin, Amsterdam and New York state. His music has been presented internationally at venues including the Southbank Centre, Barbican Centre, Kings Place, soundfestival, Britten Pears Arts, St George's Bristol, The Concertgebouw and MONOM, broadcast on NTS Radio, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 6 Music, and released on Nonclassical and Bedroom Community.
Single Form (Swell), emulates an ocean through sound.
Image c/o Sam Le Roux
NWANDO EBIZIE
An unclassifiable polymath, British-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist Nwando fabulates speculative fictions and alternate realities at the intersection of live art, experimental music and multi-sensory installation. She proposes new myths, rituals and provocations for perceptual change, radical care and transformation of the self and community, drawing from science fiction, Black Atlantic ritual cultures, biophilia, neuroscience, her own neurodivergency and Nigerian heritage. Awards include: An Ivor Novello nomination, an Oram Award, and the Steve Reid Innovation award. Her debut album was released in 2022 on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records to critical acclaim. Commissions include compositions for London Sinfonietta, Aurora Orchestra, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Opera North and Sky Arts. Her work including live art gigs, sound art installations and curated happenings, has been performed at Barbican, Southbank Centre, Wellcome Collection, Tempo Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Hepworth Wakefield, Melbourne Science Gallery, Tate Britain, Art/Science Museum, Singapore.
I Will Fix Myself (Just Circles) explores Zubin’s physical relationship to the piano.
Image c/o Dmitri Djuric
ROBIN HAIGH
Irish/British composer Robin Haigh works internationally with leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists. Described as possessing an “idiomatic and unique compositional approach, blending together styles [...] in a way that feels genuine, honest, real” (What is Metamodern? Journal), Haigh’s output includes the orchestral works SLEEPTALKER (Ivor Novello Award Nominee) and Grin (Ivor Novello Award Winner 2020) written for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Britten Sinfonia respectively, ensemble works AESOP 2 (Ivor Novello Nominee) and FILTH for Orchester im Treppenhaus, quadruple trombone concerto THE DREAMERS for Aldeburgh Festival, and chamber works for The Ligeti Quartet, Nicholas Daniel OBE, and Darragh Morgan.
Morrow rethinks the piano’s approach to touch and expressivity.
Image c/o Moritz Küstner
JASMIN KENT RODGMAN
British-Malaysian Artist & Composer Jasmin brings together the contemporary classical, electronics and sound art worlds to create powerful soundscapes and musical identities. Her music and live productions have been performed across the UK and internationally with partners such as London Fashion Week, World Music Festival Shanghai, Edinburgh International Festival, Wilderness Festival, the Roundhouse, Shoreditch Town Hall, Barbican, Oxford Playhouse and the Royal Albert Hall. Her film scores have featured at festivals such as Sundance, SXSW, Toronto International Film Festival and the London Short Film Festival. Previous work include: Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare’s Globe), Paradise Now (Bush Theatre), Brown Girls Do It Too (Soho Theatre), Britannicus (Lyric Hammersmith – Composer and Sound Designer) Red Ellen (Northern Stage - Composer & Sound Designer), Prisoner C33 (BBC & Pioneer Productions – Composer), Dorian ( Reading Rep – Sound Designer), Missing Julie (Theatre Clywd – Composer and Sound Designer), Nanjing, Feature Film – Composer, Harm (BBC Film – Composer and Sound Designer) with a live production at Bush Theatre, London and a new 2021 digital commission for Music Theatre Wales. Nineteen Ways of Looking (Chinese Arts Now), At Home with the World (Bagri Foundation), Culture Mile (London Symphony Orchestra.
one hundred random demons is inspired by Japanese folklore.
Image c/o Dmitri Djuric
AMBLE SKUSE
Amble is a composer and sound artist who uses disability theory, body sensor technology, spoken word interviews and electronics to create unique sound works. She is interested in the interface between the disabled body and the exterior world, and has explored this through numerous sound walks using her wheelchair. She was a 2022 winner of The Oram Awards and one of five Creative Scotland International Creative Entrepreneurship Fellows, a BBC Performing Arts Fellow, and was a BBC alumni fellow. She is currently an AHRC scholar undertaking a PhD in composition at the University of Plymouth. She was also a Mimu Gloves research resident in 2022. Her album What News with Alasdair Roberts and David McGuinness was described in The Guardian as “Skuse’s laptop textures offer slow-burning, elemental accompaniment throughout. So many intricate ideas here, so beautifully done.” Her most recent large work We Ask These Questions of Everybody is a digital opera exploring the lives of Disabled people in the UK. It was premiered at Scotland's Sound Festival and gained a 5-star review from The i “Politically important and an artistic triumph”.
Interiterations draws on her own practice of using MiMU sensor gloves.
CHAINES
CHAINES (Cee Haines) is an award winning composer, multi-instrumentalist and multimedia artist who writes surreal and fantastical electronica and electro-acoustic music. Their album, ‘The King’, was made Album of The Year by Robert Barry of The Wire Magazine, and was ranked in FACT magazine’s top 25 albums of 2018’s first quarter. CHAINES has also worked extensively with the London Contemporary Orchestra, premiering small and orchestral scale works at venues such as The Royal Albert Hall (BBC Proms, 2018), Tate Modern (Uniqlo’s Tate Lates, 2017) and the Roundhouse (Ron Arad’s Curtain Call, 2016). As of 2021, Cee lectures in Sound Art and Composition with Technology (SCoWT) at the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester, UK).
Escape From TERF Island comments on their experience of transphobia through molded masses of sound.
Image c/o Ben Hughs.
BEN NOBUTO
Ben Nobuto is a British/Japanese composer and pianist from Kent, UK. With a style described as ‘postmodern’ (Nonclassical) and ‘utterly contemporary’ (Manchester Collective), his music explores themes of attention and fragmentation, often drawing from internet culture and popular idioms in a playful, ironic and surreal manner. Previous works have been performed by ensembles such as Manchester Collective, CBSO, Manchester Camerata, Ligeti Quartet, NYCGB, BCMG and Tangram, and have featured on BBC Radio 6, Times Radio and Resonance FM, among others. He is currently working towards a debut album with the support of Sound and Music’s ‘New Voices’ scheme, set to release in mid-2023.
Bad Infinity creates GIF-like loops with cyborg sounds.
Image c/o Manchester Collective: Phil Sharp
ZUBIN KANGA
As a composer, Kanga’s output includes Dead Leaves for piano and live electronics, which was selected to represent Australia at the International Rostrum of Composers in 2018; Spider Web Castle for viola and piano, which he premièred with Brett Dean at Extended Play Festival; and Steel on Bone, which he premiered at hcmf//, featuring MiMU gloves morphing the sounds of extended techniques inside the piano, which The Times praised for its ‘bravura and madness’.
Zubin’s own work, Metamemory, is a dialogue between real and artificial music memories.
Image c/o Raphael Neal.
