Ensemble Offspring: Lumen Machine

Cutting-edge technology meets extreme virtuosity when London based ‘cyborg pianist’ Zubin Kanga joins Ensemble Offspring at ACO on the Pier.

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, we’ve commissioned four new chamber concertos that 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, the protagonist of Captain Keyboard – initially a force for good – turns ‘increasingly villainous’.

Dream Machine 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 Vochlea voice-control software to transform the pianist into an alien-like soloist, a ‘monstrous techno-social hallucination’.

Meanwhile, Zubin Kanga turns to the rhythmic arpeggiations of an old-school analogue synthesizer to spin a vibrant, whirling dance in From the Machine.

And we’ll leave you smiling with the Ensemble Offspring 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’.

 Pre-concert Talk | 6.45pm

 Program

TRISTAN COELHO Hot Take* (2024) AMANDA COLE Dream Garden* (2024) ZUBIN KANGA From the Machine* (2024) BRIGITTA MUNTENDORF New work* (2024) ANNA MEREDITH Bumps Per Minute – selections from 18 Studies for Dodgems (2021, arr. Jessica Wells 2023)

• World premiere

 Artists

Zubin Kanga cyborg piano, keyboards Claire Edwardes Artistic Director, percussion Lamorna Nightingale flute Jason Noble clarinet Véronique Serret violin Blair Harris cello Ben Carey sound

Pre Concert Talk Host Vanessa Hughes

CONCERT duration

75 mins (no interval)

Source: https://www.emus.space/archive/2025/4/12/ensemble-offspring-lumen-machine