‘Lumen Machine’ is a thrilling collaboration between Zubin Kanga and Ensemble Offspring. The programme premieres three new chamber concertos by Cyborg Soloists composers. Wielding special powers through a motion-sensor ring, 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, Zubin Kanga turns to the rhythmic arpeggiations of an old-school analogue synthesizer to spin a vibrant, whirling dance in From the Machine (after Eastman).

Brigitta Muntendorf: Weight and Load #2 (2025)
Zubin Kanga From the Machine (after Eastman) (2025)
Amanda Cole Dream Garden (2025)
Anna Meredith Bumps Per Minute: Joy Subdivision, Deep Thought Panda, Norcanoe, Tom Cruise Runs (2021, arr. Jessica Wells 2023)
Tristan Coelho Hot Take (2025)

This programme is a repeat of that performed in Sydney on 12 April 2025, where the pieces by Brigitta Muntendorf, Zubin Kanga, Amanda Cole and Tristan Coelho were premiered.

‘Lumen Machine’ is a thrilling collaboration between Zubin Kanga and Ensemble Offspring. The programme premieres three new chamber concertos by Cyborg Soloists composers. Wielding special powers through a motion-sensor ring, 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, Zubin Kanga turns to the rhythmic arpeggiations of an old-school analogue synthesizer to spin a vibrant, whirling dance in From the Machine (after Eastman).

Brigitta Muntendorf: Weight and Load #2* (2025)

Zubin Kanga From the Machine (after Eastman)* (2025)

Amanda Cole Dream Garden* (2025)

Anna Meredith Bumps Per Minute: Joy Subdivision, Deep Thought Panda, Norcanoe, Tom Cruise Runs (2021, arr. Jessica Wells 2023)

Tristan Coelho Hot Take* (2025)

* World premiere

The programme will be repeated in Newcastle (NSW) on 13 April 2025.

Zubin Kanga performs the UK premiere of Steady State by Alexander Schubert, a work for musician and two assistants which features live brain-sensor control of music and holographic video. This will be the UK premiere of this innovative and theatrical piece.

Part of the free hcmf// shorts day of performances. See the full programme here →

Zubin Kanga performs Philip Venables’ extraordinary and moving Answer Machine Tape, 1987, for solo piano and Augmented Instruments Lab’s KeyScanner technology at Transit Festival in Leuven, Belgium.

Read about Venables’ powerful work about the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York here →

For more information and tickets, visit the festival website →

Zubin Kanga performs three works commissioned by Cyborg Soloists:

Tansy Davies – Star-Way
Alex Groves – DANCE SUITE
Zubin Kanga – Hypnagogia (After Bach)

This performance of DANCE SUITE will be the world premiere of Groves’ second work for the Cyborg Soloists project, after his earlier work for the ROLI Lumi Keys, Single Form (Swell). DANCE SUITE will be performed on a ROLI Seaboard RISE 2 keyboard, and in it, Groves takes chopped-up dance floor remnants and reimagines them for the concert hall.

Tickets and more information may be found on the Southbank Centre website →

This performance is the second of the evening, following Zubin’s performance with Manchester Collective of the London premiere of a new work by Laurence Osborn, Schiller’s Piano. Read more about this event here →

Zubin Kanga premieres Laurence Osborn’s new piece Schiller’s Piano with Manchester Collective. After seeing a replica of Schiller’s piano – which was built by WW2 prisoners and unable to play music – Osborn responds to fascism’s empty attempts to recreate the past in his new concerto. It’s an auditory hallucination where Kanga conjures ghostly samples of piano construction with his keyboard: handsaws, sandpaper, drills.

Also on the programme, music by Grażyna Bacewicz, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Caroline Shaw and Wojciech Kilar.

For more details, full programme and ticket sales, visit Manchester Collective’s website →

Zubin Kanga premieres Laurence Osborn’s new piece Schiller’s Piano with Manchester Collective. After seeing a replica of Schiller’s piano – which was built by WW2 prisoners and unable to play music – Osborn responds to fascism’s empty attempts to recreate the past in his new concerto. It’s an auditory hallucination where Kanga conjures ghostly samples of piano construction with his keyboard: handsaws, sandpaper, drills.

Also on the programme, music by Grażyna Bacewicz, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Caroline Shaw and Wojciech Kilar.

For more details, full programme and ticket sales, visit Manchester Collective’s website →

Zubin Kanga returns to Gaudeamus, performing four works that extend the piano, and his body, with cutting-edge technologies. Massimiliano Vizzini’s Fantasie Im(prompt)u, explores the changing role of AI in the artistic process, as well as a new experimental optical scanner, the Keyscanner, turning the piano into a hybrid audio-visual controller. Alex Paxton injects manic energy into Car-Pig, using sampler keyboards to layer dozens of sounds, from choirs, to bagpipes to animal noises. Zubin Kanga’s Steel on Bone uses MiMU sensor gloves to shape visceral sounds from inside the piano. And Laura Bowler’s SHOW(ti)ME explores the contrast between musicians’ public personas and their private anxieties, in an interdisciplinary work combining the speaking pianist with sensors and live audio-visual interaction.

Massimiliano Vizzini - Fantasie Im(prompt)u (World Premiere)
Alex Paxton - Car-Pig
Zubin Kanga - Steel on Bone
Laura Bowler - SHOW(ti)ME

Tickets for this performance may be purchased via the Gaudeamus website →

Car-Pig by Alex Paxton and SHOW(ti)ME by Laura Bowler were both commissioned by Zubin Kanga as part of Cyborg Soloists, supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London. Steel on Bone was also developed as part of Cyborg Soloists. Fantasie Im(prompt)u by Massimiliano Vizzini was co-commissioned by Gaudeamus Festival and Zubin Kanga, with the support of Gaudeamus Festival.

Zubin Kanga will be premiering Larry Goves’ Cyborg Soloists-commissioned concerto Curious codes of silence with Explore Ensemble at 2024’s Aldeburgh Festival. Laura Bowler’s SHOW(ti)ME is also on the programme, as are pieces by Lara Agar and Alex Paxton.

Lara Agar: New work (Britten Pears Arts co-commission / first performance) (15’)

Larry Goves: Curious codes of silence (first performance) (20’)

Laura Bowler: SHOW(ti)ME (20’)

Alex Paxton: Spit Crystal Yeast-rack, dripping (à l’orange) (15')

Explore Ensemble
Nicholas Moroz live sound
Zubin Kanga piano, keyboard, Lumatone, MiMU gloves, multimedia

For full details and ticket bookings, visit the Britten Pears website →

Celebrating the launch of we are environments for each other, a new album of music by Scott McLaughlin performed by Mira Benjamin (violin) and Zubin Kanga (piano & electronics), released on Huddersfield Contemporary Records.

The concert features an extended version of the title track, which concerns entanglements of sound and material and agency, and what paths and possibilities emerge when responding in performance to a complex field of potentials. Zubin Kanga uses an electromagnetic resonator to explore the harmonics of the piano strings, creating feedback drones. Mira Benjamin's violin is inserted into this feedback, impersonating the piano string and replacing its resonances with her own, trying to find points of metastability, hybrid harmonies where piano and violin strings mutually reinforce. Both players holding each other in a balance of resonances, curating serendipity.

Visit Music We’d Like To Hear’s website for more information and ticket bookings →

Zubin Kanga performs Alexander Schubert’s Cyborg Soloists-commissioned piece Steady State in Dublin. Using state-of-the-art brain sensors, (along with body and motion sensors) to control video, light and sound, this work is staged as a retro sci-fi laboratory experiment in which the cyborg performers’ brain becomes a component in an audio-visual feedback loop. This is the world premiere of this groundbreaking work. 

The concert also features Zubin Kanga’s own Steel on Bone, using MiMU sensor gloves to shape visceral sounds from inside the piano using gestures through the air. The concert concludes with British composer Laura Bowler’s SHOW(ti)ME, which explores the contrast between musicians’ public personas (on stage and social media) and their private anxieties. It draws back the mask of performance through an explosive magnification of the minutiae of piano practice, combining the piano with a range of technologies including live video and audio (including talking emoji) and MiMU sensor gloves.

Tickets available now from the National Concert Hall’s website →

Featuring new works by three student composer-performers selected from our 2024 Call for Student Projects: Art Banymandhub, Hannah Lam and Sophia Manta. These artists have created their pieces using innovative technologies including the ROLI LUMI Keys (a keyboard with pressure and surface sensors) and ShowSync (software that creates live visuals that respond to the music).

The concert also features a duo performance by Jack Frankland and Jonathan Packham (Cyborg Soloists Postdoctoral Research Assistant) featuring the Genki Wave motion sensor ring, as well as a performance by Zubin Kanga of his own piece Hypnagogia (after Bach), featuring the piano, an analogue synthesizer and MiMU sensor gloves that can shape sounds through gesture and movement.

Part of the New Sounds Festival. Booking is essential.

More information and tickets available here →

What happens when you fuse the piano instrument with cutting-edge technology? In his performance of Shiva Feshareki, Zubin Kanga complements his piano play with immersive electronics and ambisonic surround sounds. In his own music, he distorts Bach's music with analog synthesisers and MiMU's sensor hands, while in Laura Bowler's work, he explores the complex relationship with social media through live video and audio, speech and movement theatre.

Programme

Shiva Feshareki: Whirling Dervishes

Zubin Kanga: Hypnagogia (after Bach)

Laura Bowler: SHOW(ti)ME

More information and tickets from the Flagey website →

Benjamin Tassie’s Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees uses the latest studio and keyboard technologies (including the 4D expressive ROLI Seaboard Rise 2 keyboard) to augment the sound and capabilities of some of the world’s most significant historical organs. The piece uses recordings made by the composer, of historical organs from across the UK and Europe, including the Van Straten Organ, a reconstruction of a late-Medieval Dutch organ (dating from 1479) in Amsterdam, period instruments at St Cecelia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh, and the Wingfield Organ, a reconstructed English Tudor organ. 

Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees is a monolithic, 75-minute tour de force, in which the audience is invited to immerse themselves in this sonically enveloping drone-composition. Performed by Kanga in the round using three different keyboards to trigger these organ sounds virtually, this piece of shifting and transforming tones creates a rich and enveloping sensory experience.

Full details and tickets for this free performance on the National Gallery’s website →

Zubin Kanga performs a varied programme of works for piano and an assortment of technologies for Modulus Festival in Vancouver:

How does a pianist “play the internet”? Alexander Schubert’s WIKI-PIANO.NET is a hilarious and curious challenge that pairs piano, spoken instructions, and an internet score that can change at any time.

Laura Bowler’s SHOW(ti)ME investigates our physical and virtual selves. Over the course of the piece, you’ll witness an explosive magnification of the minutia of being a pianist, contorted through a collage of multimedia.

In Luke Nickel’s hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess, simulated roller coaster velocities become metronomic pulsations passing through wireless connections to small vibrating watches cueing a pianist to press keys that hit hammers on strings. It’s a wild – and fun! – ride.

And Zubin Kanga’s Metamemory is a dialogue between his real and artificial music memories, using a neural network created from Kanga’s own past to create music that is both monstrous and strangely beautiful.

More information and ticket bookings from Music on Main →

Pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga launches his debut solo album with NMC, Cyborg Pianist, in a concert featuring all six newly commissioned works, using new technologies to swirl, melt and morph the sounds of his piano and keyboards. Across these works, Kanga creates 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.

More information and tickets from the Kings Place website →

Programme

Oliver Leith Vicentino, love you – studies for keyboard ('L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica)

Zubin Kanga Hypnagogia (after Bach) (excerpt)

Shiva Feshareki Whirling Dervishes (album version)

Laurence Osborn Counterfeits (Siminică)

Emily Howard DEVIANCE

Laura Bowler SHOW(ti)ME

Zubin Kanga performing Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987

Zubin Kanga will be performing Philip Venables’ extraordinary and moving Answer Machine Tape, 1987, for solo piano and Augmented Instruments Lab’s KeyScanner technology at Musica Festival in Strasbourg.

Read about Venables’ powerful work about the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York here →

For more information and tickets, visit the Musica Festival website.

Zubin will also be performing this piece at 7pm on the same day.

Zubin Kanga performing Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987

Zubin Kanga will be performing Philip Venables’ extraordinary and moving Answer Machine Tape, 1987, for solo piano and Augmented Instruments Lab’s KeyScanner technology at Musica Festival in Strasbourg.

Read about Venables’ powerful work about the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York here →

For more information and tickets, visit the Musica Festival website.

Zubin will also be performing this work at 10pm on the same day.

Nonclassical presents the launch event for Zubin Kanga’s new album of Cyborg-Soloists-commissioned pieces, Machine Dreams. The album - and this performance - explores the intersection between music, technology and virtuosity, with new music for augmented keyboards, synthesizers, electronic sensor gloves, AI-generated sounds, and more interactive technologies. The night will feature new commissions by Alex Paxton, CHAINES, Tansy Davies, Nwando Ebizie, Robin Haigh, Alex Groves, Jasmin Kent Rodgman, Ben Nobuto, Amble Skuse and Zubin himself.

Zubin’s performance is paired with a set by Zöllner-Roche duo in which accordionist Eva Zöllner and clarinettist Heather Roche will perform Joe Snape’s piece for Cyborg Soloists, Signs of Life, ‘a quirky, pop-infused work that begins in melancholy but by the end radiates hope and joy’ as well as work by American composer Julie Zhu.

For full details and tickets, visit the Nonclassical website →

Join Zubin Kanga as he makes full use of the audio-visual capabilities of the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub at Jesus College to showcase brand new, technology-focussed music that has not yet been heard in Oxford. He will perform on a range of instruments, including digital instruments, synthesizers, and a traditional piano.

The programme includes Alexander Schubert’s WIKI-PIANO.NET, Alex Groves’ Single Form (Swell), Luke Nickel’s hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess and Zubin’s own Hypnagogia (after Bach).

Full details and tickets here →

Zubin Kanga performs Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Paris Autumn Festival.

Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is a major new work for piano and multimedia by Philip Venables, created in collaboration with dramatist Ted Huffman and programmer Simon Hendry. It focuses on New York visual artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death of Peter Hujar – his former lover, close friend and fellow artist – from an AIDS-related illness in 1987. The work’s focal point is Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape from the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers, exploring his life, that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.

Answer Machine Tape, 1987 uses new sensor technology – the Keyscanner created by the Augmented Instruments Laboratory – allowing the piano to function not just as an acoustic instrument, but as a typewriter to transcribe, comment on and illuminate the messages. This is a work that is enigmatic and meditative, opening a door for the audience and beckoning them to take a step inside. We eavesdrop into a private world; messages are transliterated into a musical fabric, becoming character studies, becoming reflections on a community, becoming attempts to decipher meaning. Transcription, and its failure in the face of extreme difficulty, becomes a poignant metaphor for the AIDS crisis and its devastating effect on a generation.

For tickets (from 9 September 2022) and links to the full festival programme, visit the Paris Autumn website

Cyborg Soloists’ Director, pianist Zubin Kanga presents the UK premiere of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at hcmf// 2022. Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is a major new work for piano and multimedia by Philip Venables, created in collaboration with dramatist Ted Huffman and programmer Simon Hendry. It focuses on New York visual artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death of Peter Hujar – his former lover, close friend and fellow artist – from an AIDS-related illness in 1987. The work’s focal point is Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape from the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers, exploring his life, that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.

Answer Machine Tape, 1987 uses new sensor technology – the Keyscanner created by the Augmented Instruments Laboratory – allowing the piano to function not just as an acoustic instrument, but as a typewriter to transcribe, comment on and illuminate the messages. This is a work that is enigmatic and meditative, opening a door for the audience and beckoning them to take a step inside. We eavesdrop into a private world; messages are transliterated into a musical fabric, becoming character studies, becoming reflections on a community, becoming attempts to decipher meaning. Transcription, and its failure in the face of extreme difficulty, becomes a poignant metaphor for the AIDS crisis and its devastating effect on a generation.

For tickets (from 9 September 2022) and links to the full festival programme, visit hcmf//’s website

Zubin Kanga performs Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at November Music in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands.

This major new work for piano and multimedia has been created in collaboration with dramatist Ted Huffman, programmer Simon Hendry and Zubin Kanga. It focuses on New York visual artist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death of Peter Hujar, Wojnarowicz’s close friend and fellow artist, from AIDS-related illness in 1987. It uses a transcription of Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape in the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers, to explore not just his life, but that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.

Using the KeyScanner, new sensor technology from the Augmented Instruments Lab, the piano will function both as an acoustic instrument and as a typewriter to transcribe sections of tape onto the screen, as well as acting as a controller to add electronic sound and light, combining in an integrated solo multimedia performance.

The result is a powerful and poignant work that reflects on queer history and what it is to be a queer person today.

Visit the November Music website for full details of the performance and ticket sales

Zubin Kanga premieres new works by Nina Whiteman and Alex Groves alongside Luke Nickel’s hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess, his own Steel on Bone and Alexander Schubert’s WIKI-PIANO.NET in this programme for Music in the Round.

The programme uses a range of technologies from Cyborg Soloists industry partners. Whiteman uses Movesense sensors with Holonic Systems software alongside AI-manipulated field recordings from her daily commute to explore alien sonic environments through gesture. Groves uses ROLI’s LUMI keyboards, Nickel uses Soundbrenner’s haptic metronomes to feed tempi from rollercoasters onscreen to Zubin Kanga as he performs at the piano. Kanga’s Steel on Bone uses the motion-sensing capabilities of MiMU gloves to manipulate sounds from inside the piano.

And, finally, Alexander Schubert’s WIKI-PIANO.NET from 2018 explores the nature of internet culture with a score that can be shaped by audience contributions. Make your own contribution to this performance by adding or editing material for this piece at wiki-piano.net.

Nina Whiteman - cybird cybird (world premiere)

Alex Groves - Single Form (Swell) (world premiere)

Zubin Kanga - Steel on Bone (2021)

Luke Nickel - hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess (2022)

Alexander Schubert - WIKI-PIANO.NET (2018)

Book tickets from Music in the Round’s website →

Zubin Kanga premieres Philip Venables’ Answer Machine Tape, 1987, commissioned for Cyborg Soloists, at Time of Music Festival in Finland. This major new work for piano and multimedia has been created in collaboration with dramatist Ted Huffman, programmer Simon Hendry and Zubin Kanga. It focuses on New York visual artist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death of Peter Hujar, Wojnarowicz’s close friend and fellow artist, from AIDS-related illness in 1987. It uses a transcription of Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape in the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers, to explore not just his life, but that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.

Using the KeyScanner, new sensor technology from the Augmented Instruments Lab, the piano will function both as an acoustic instrument and as a typewriter to transcribe sections of tape onto the screen, as well as acting as a controller to add electronic sound and light, combining in an integrated solo multimedia performance.

The result is a powerful and poignant work that reflects on queer history and what it is to be a queer person today.

Visit the Time of Music Festival website for more information and to book tickets to this premiere performance.

Zubin Kanga performs the world premiere of the completed version of Hammerklavier, a major piano and film work created by composer Michael Finnissy and filmmaker Adam de la Cour. Hammerklavier is inspired by Finnissy’s memories of the great Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter performing Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata in 1975, and by Richter’s secret queer life. 

This 40-minute version of the work matches the scale of Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’, transforming each movement in reverse order. Adam de la Cour’s film draws on concert films of Richter, as well as queer cinema of the mid-20th-century in a complex dialogue with the music.  

The performance will be preceded by an introductory talk and discussion with the co-creators, discussing Finnissy’s approach to transcription, de la Cour’s experimental film techniques, the work’s exploration of Richter’s pianism and sexual identity, and the relationship between piano and film.

Book free tickets at the Royal Academy of Music website

Zubin Kanga performs his own Steel on Bone and Simon Steen-Andersen’s Pretty Sound (Up and Down) alongside works by Claudia Molitor and Alexander Schubert.

This programme is dedicated to the question of performativity and physicality in contemporary music, and Zubin’s set is complemented by a performance of works by Amir Shpilman.

Full programme information is available on Kontraklang’s website