Zubin Kanga - The Art of Sinking

Pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga performs new solo works created out of his Cyborg Soloists research project, combining the piano with malleable keyboards, interactive visuals, motion sensors, AI-integrated software and other cutting-edge technologies.

Lara Agar’s ON THE WAY OUT combines looping piano textures with deep resonant synthesizer drones and a voice shaped using a Genki Wave motion sensor ring, in an intimate dialogue with stop-motion visuals exploring loss, decay and the inevitable power of nature. 

In Rylan Gleave’s Gulf, the performer treads a knife-edge between natural and  artificial soundscapes, using AI-assisted video motion capture (developed in collaboration with MiMU gloves creator Tom Mitchell) to allow the pianist to shape the sounds of the piano through gestures in the air. 

Ben Nobuto’s The Art of Sinking takes the loneliness and anxiety of a pianist preparing for a performance and explodes their inner monologue onto the stage in a virtuosic combination of ROLI Seaboard (a malleable keyboard which allows sounds to be moulded through movement within and across keys), video and piano, drawing together the pianistic bravura of Liszt and Ravel with the glitchy rhythms of video game music.

Zubin will also be joined by accordionist Andreas Borregaard to launch their duo project with 8.5 Traditional English Folksongs by Neil Luck, a suite of technologically mediated love duets drawn from Samuel Pepys’s collection of 17th century Broadside Ballads.

All the works on this programme were commissioned by Zubin Kanga as part of Cyborg Soloists, supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London.