Lumen Machine will take you to the bleeding edge of musical technology. In a thrilling collaboration with ‘cyborg pianist’ and Ensemble Offspring alumnus Zubin Kanga, four new chamber concertos will bring everything we find exciting about music – its drama, its personality, its virtuosity – into a futuristic sound world.
What’s in store? Wielding special powers through a motion-sensor ring, our cyborg pianist is the protagonist in Hot Take – initially a force for good – turns ‘increasingly villainous’. Dream Garden employs the game-changing Lumatone keyboard and Amanda Cole’s own 48-note scale (Cube Tuning) in a mesmerising contemporary chaconne. Renowned German-Austrian composer Brigitta Muntendorf uses light-control sensors to transform the pianist into an alien-like soloist, a ‘monstrous techno-social hallucination’. Meanwhile, our soloist Zubin Kanga turns to the rhythmic arpeggiations of an old-school analogue synthesiser to spin a vibrant, whirling dance in From the Machine. And we’ll leave you smiling with an original arrangement of Anna Meredith’s Bumps Per Minute, an exhilarating sound experience that has been likened to ‘drinking several very strong cups of coffee in fast succession’.
The new works by Brigitta Muntendorf, Amanda Cole and Tristan Coelho were commissioned by Zubin Kanga as part of Cyborg Soloists, supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London.
Performance details:
- Saturday 12 April 7:30pm, The Neilson ACO On The Pier
Includes Pre Concert Talk 6:45pm persented by Vanessa Hughes - Sunday 13 April 3:30pm, Newcastle Conservatorium of Music
For more information click here
