Sound Unwrapped 2023

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Welcome to Sound Unwrapped, the 15th edition of our year-long, award-winning series, which aims to explore innovation in sound art and music through spatialised listening experiences.

Reflecting back, we realised that the inspiration for this series came from three very different sources: the first, and most important, was the generous offer from d&b audiotechnik to install their Soundscape system in Hall Two. When deployed creatively, this allows for surround sound and multichannel immersive performances, the dynamic manipulation of sound objects in the space and for a plethora of exciting new acoustics to be created in our studio hall. Its possibilities have enticed many artists and ensembles, who will either create bespoke new work, or for whom the system will open up new dimensions in the performance of existing work.

This deep dive into sound and listening threw a spotlight on musicians and areas of music we were keen to explore, from electronic artists previously encountered in our adventurous Luminate series, to international legends such as Midori Takada, Robert Henke or the continuously inventive Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Lucrecia Dalt to a host of diverse new voices in this arena.

The theme also took us back to the earliest electroacoustic experiments of Varese and Stockhausen, to the forensic meditations on sound of pioneers such as James Tenney and Eliane Radigue, to those who brought field recording and electronic sounds into play with live instrumental music, from Berio and Saariaho to Cosmo Sheldrake, George Benjamin to NikNak, and our artists in residence, Hannah Peel and Space Afrika.

The third provocation came, we now realise, out of the pandemic, with the enforced distancing of musicians and audiences. At once, spaces were expanded, altered, listeners and performers thrown into different relationship, in both virtual and in acoustic space. We ourselves used the gallery to distance singers and instrumentalists from each other, and new dynamics and possibilities opened up. Some of the most unforgettable nights in our time here have been achieved by these spatial arrangements, and that is what we’ll be experimenting with next year, from Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers to John Luther Adams’s thrilling Qilyuan, and even straying into the loftier vaults of partner venues… watch this space.

JACOB SILKIN SENIOR PROGRAMME MANAGER, CONTEMPORARY

HELEN WALLACE EXECUTIVE & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Dive into the wave…

Tom Service

Unwrapped audiences to listen and experience music in multi-dimensional ways

Sound Unwrapped: if we unwrap sound, what will we find? Over a year of sonic exploration at Kings Place and beyond in these concerts, we'll go on expeditions inside sound, inside space, and inside ourselves, in musical experiences that put our listening centre stage: whether we're surrounded by the warp and weft of pieces by Claudio Monteverdi or Rebecca Saunders, whether we find ourselves in the middle of Thomas Tallis's choral music or a spatialised version of Liam Byrne's viola da gamba, George Crumb’s Black Angels or Hannah Peel's cosmic electronics.

Whatever else connects the vertiginously various imaginations of artists from Space Afrika to the Colin Currie Quartet, Chris Watson to Midori Takada, every event in the Sound Unwrapped season is an invitation to reconnect with one of the fundamentals of musical experience: the fact that all of our music is made by bodies in space: performing bodies, composing bodies, and the virtual bodies of the technology that so many artists will deploy and diffuse throughout the year, whether acoustically or through the speakers that make up the new d&b Soundscape system in Hall Two of Kings Place.

‘it promises the unflattening, the unwrapping, of the many dimensions of musical experience into new spaces and new meanings’

The enveloping possibilities of these Soundscape speakers to create bespoke 360-degree acoustic environments are a contemporary manifestation of a centuries-long story of how musicians have made their music in a symbiotic dance between sound and space, whether it was music created for the ducal chapel of Mantua or the cavernous spaces of St Mark’s Venice in the 17th century, or the acoustic and electronic works that Karlheinz Stockhausen made to envelop his listeners in Germany and Japan in the 20th. And yet it's that physical story of music's phenomenology that's so often lost in the histories that are told about it, in the barnacled narratives that accrue to the hull of the lumbering historical vessel of "classical music" in particular. Instead of a story of living sounds and bodies in spaces from

churches to concert halls to salons to studios, classical music is often reduced to a cargo-load of immutable works that exist in a hermeticallysealed, resonance-free place of imagination, in which, in conventional performances, they are wheeled out of cold storage to be presented as if they were two-dimensional objects in threedimensional spaces.

That's the illusion of the proscenium arches and the stages of the concert platforms where everything from orchestral works to avantgarde experimentation is usually presented. It's as if the musical work happens up there in the frame, squashed into a sonic diorama that we're not invited into as an audience. Our space in the auditorium is not theirs of the performers on the stage; the players can't break out of the frame just as the musical work is bounded by the edges of the concert platform, where it must be respected and venerated at all costs, even at the price of flattening out music's multiple dimensions of sounding and feeling.

Every event in Sound Unwrapped is a rebuttal of that separation - performers, listeners, creators - from one another. Instead, in putting the performers and sound sources around and above us, as so many of the concerts will do - whether immersed inside Shiva Feshareki's electronics , Eliane Radigue's Occam Ocean, or the antiphonal cornetts of Monteverdi - we will experience the unflattening, the unwrapping, of the many dimensions of the musical experience into new spaces and new meanings.

The reality is that no sound was ever made for a vacuum. That's true for the places it was composed for and in which these concerts will echo, and it's also true for the spaces of our listening where the resonances of Sound Unwrapped will find their most powerful realisation.

There is a lot to look forward to: the chance to go Moonbathing McMaster, story-telling in the dark, to be at the listening centre of Britten's string quartet in the Gildas Quartet's gig, to travel both Supersonic and super-deep into the shimmering illusions of music as mind-altering intoxicant with Aurora Orchestra and the Riot Ensemble, to fly in the Antiphony of the Trees with Laura Cannell and to be overwhelmed by the 25 year accumulation of Robert Henke's sonic Dust. It’s all an adventure in sound and space that reveals the truth of R. Murray Schafer's beautiful maxim that sound-making is ‘touching at a distance’. Sound Unwrapped collapses that distance, making our listening a visceral experience in the shared spaces we'll make with the musicians at Kings Place, and in the intimate spaces of our imaginations.

Tom Service is presenter of BBC Radio 4 Music Matters and The Listening Service. His latest book is The Listening Service (Faber).

‘Every event in Sound Unwrapped is a rebuttal of the separation - performers, listeners, creators - from one another.’

Thu 19 & Sat 21 Jan | various times

Moonbathing 360° Sound installation

contemporary soundscape

An introduction to the d&b Soundscape system, this 45-minute immersive sound experience features new spatial mixes from Anna Meredith, Oliver Coates, Rival Consoles and many more… Stroud-based spatial experience designers Loss><Gain (David Sheppard and John Best) have collaborated with a range of musicians to write and re-work music as part of a deep-listening trip.

£6.50

Colin Currie Quartet

Dark Full Ride

contemporary

John Luther Adams

Qilyuan

Rolf Wallin Twine

David Lang So Called

Laws of Nature Part 2

Steve Reich Drumming

Part 1

Connor Shafran

Continental Divide

Julia Wolfe Dark Full Ride

Colin Currie’s radical programme explodes a percussion quartet, sending it to all four corners of the concert hall. Inspired by the ‘multiple sound groups’ of early works such as Drumming, Colin Currie Quartet investigate layers of homogenous percussive sonority. From the spatialised bass drums of John Luther Adams’s Qilyuan, to the intimacy of Rolf Wallin’s Twine, they also present the thrilling drum kits of Julia Wolfe’s Dark Full Ride.

£19.50 - £39.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Fri 20 Jan | Colin Currie Quartet

Fri 20 Jan | Hall Two 9pm

Liam Byrne Soundscape solos

contemporary soundscape

The sound of the viola da gamba is always enchanting, but Liam Byrne makes it truly magical in this programme for viol and live electronics. Featuring works from his celebrated 2019 album Concrete in new, fully immersive live rearrangements using Soundscape, Liam builds fresh creations out of the madrigals of Maddalena Casulana and Picforth’s In Nomine, constructs a sonic cathedral with Nico Muhly’s Long Phrases for the Wilton Diptych, and transforms harmonies into clouds of colour in Alex Mills’s Suspensions and Solutions

£18.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Sat 21 Jan | Hall Two 8pm

Crick Crack Club Storytelling in The Dark

words

The Crick Crack Club cooks up an experiment of wild uncertainty. Come with us into the unmapped terrain of stories told in the dark, shot through with enchantment, transformation, things lost, things found, grown-up fairytale and weird myth. Here, your ears will be your guide, and anything you see happens in the cinema of your imagination. Voices, stories, you, and your companionswhoever they may be. Follow us into the dark. Suitable for adults.

£15 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Programme 2023

Sun 22 Jan | Hall Two 6.30pm

Fri 20 Jan | Liam Byrne

Sun 22 Jan | NikNak

Fri 27 Jan | Hall One 7.30pm

The Sixteen with Julian Joseph classical

Celebrated jazz pianist Julian Joseph joins Harry Christophers and The Sixteen for an evening of music by and inspired by Monteverdi, sparking off a conversation between two distinctive sound worlds, five hundred years apart. While jazz musicians improvise over bass riffs, Monteverdi’s continuo section did just the same – performers on chittarone, harp and harpsichord were given the freedom to extemporise and express their musical characters. Look forward to a unique and atmospheric sonic experience which unites two distinctive styles and eras.

£24.50 - £49.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Sat 28 Jan | Hall Two 4.30pm & 8pm

The Breath

folk soundscape

The Breath is guitarist Stuart McCallum and BBC Folk Award winner, singer Ríoghnach Connolly. Based in Manchester their unique, contemporary take on alt-folk journeys from lush, beguiling storytelling to uplifting anthems. The Breath have created a special performance with the d&b Soundscape system which will surround both performers and audience. The duo premier new material from their forthcoming album and re-interpret music from Carry Your Kin and Let the Cards Fall (Realworld), to make full use of the immersive sound system. Expect to be bathed in a bewitching collection of heartfelt songs as likely to touch on childhood summers and first love as cultural dislocation, postcolonial injustices and grief.

£22.50+ under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Fri 27 Jan | The Sixteen

Sat 28 Jan | The Breath

Sun 29 Jan | Hall Two 11am

Christina McMaster Inner landscape

contemporary

Blurring boundaries between performance art, music and healing ritual, this is an opportunity to experience a truly immersive sound therapy session with pianist Christina McMaster. The inspirational

Sat 28 Jan | Hall One 8pm

Space Afrika Honest Labour

contemporary

With their slow-stepping urban dubscapes, Manchester duo Space Afrika are Artists in Residence for Unwrapped. They make music from ‘overlapping moments’ –oblique mosaics of dialogue, rhythm, texture and shadow. In a special commission for Sound Unwrapped will be realising their ground-breaking 2021 record Labour, with a fully-scored performance for orchestral ensemble and guests from the record. Since Labour’s release, Space Afrika have received international acclaim from outlets such as Pitchfork Libération, as well as winning Resident Advisor the Year 2021.

£22.50 + concession tickets

Sun 29 Jan | Hall Two 6.30pm

Gildas Quartet Britten in Surround Sound

classical

Purcell Chacony, Fantasias in F & D minor  Britten Quartet No. 2 in C major An in-the-round experience of Britten’s Quartet No. 2 and the music of Purcell which inspired it. Surround Sound Sessions is the Gildas Quartet’s award-winning new acoustic performance format. In this hour-long concert the audience is invited into the centre of the string quartet, hearing the music from a new perspective as the Gildas deconstruct and demonstrate aspects of the music. A complete memorised performance of Britten’s quartet ends the concert, with the audience surrounding the players.

£19.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Sun 29 Jan | Christina McMaster

Sun 29 Jan | Gildas Quartet

Sun 29 Jan | Hall One 7pm

Lucrecia Dalt ¡Ay!

contemporary

Critically-acclaimed Colombian vocalist and producer Lucrecia Dalt presents a new duo show centred around her upcoming album ¡Ay!, which will arrive in October via RVNG Intl. On this record, Dalt channels innate sensory echoes of growing up in Colombia, where traditional instrumentation encounters Afro-Latin syncopations and sci-fi meditations that bend time and topography.

£22.50 + concession tickets

Fri 3 Feb | Hall One 7.30pm

Aurora Orchestra

classical

Debussy (arr.

Iain Farrington) Jeux

George Benjamin Antara

John Adams Gnarly Buttons

Gershwin (arr. Farrington)

Ballet sequence from An American in Paris

Timothy Orpen clarinet

Nicholas Collon conductor

Electronics enrich Aurora’s sound world in this scintillating programme. George Benjamin was studying electronic music in Paris when he found himself transfixed by the incongruous sounds of a group of Latin American buskers performing by the Pompidou Centre. The extraordinary resulting piece for ensemble and electronics, Antara, has become one of Benjamin’s defining works. John Adams’ Gnarly Buttons is an uproarious and virtuosic tour de force for solo clarinet, ensemble and electronics, written as a homage to the composer’s clarinet-playing father. The programme is completed by masterpieces expertly reimagined by Aurora’s Arranger in Residence Iain Farrington, Ravel’s Jeux and the ballet from Gershwin's An American in Paris.

£19.50 - £69.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Sat 4 Feb | Hall Two 8pm

Holy Other + Malibu

contemporary soundscape

English electronic musician Holy Other is part of a mesmerising double bill with French ambient musician Malibu, who makes her UK debut. Holy Other became a ‘witch house’ landmark as part of Tri Angle Records, most notably for their mystical and quasilegendary album Held (2012). Following nine years of absence, Holy Other returned in 2021 with Lieve, with collaborations from Daniel Thorne on saxophone and Sian O'Gorman (NYX). Malibu is a French electronic musician whose work sails between ambient and ethereal, and whose sound is like a sea of synthetic strings and choirs. Experience Holy Other and Malibu in glistening clarity in immersive Soundscape.

£16.50 + concession tickets

Dreamer

broadcaster, and Artist in Residence for Sound Unwrapped

If you want to wrap yourself up in the work of a sound artist that is restlessly, thrillingly creative, then meet Hannah Peel. Not only is she a well-known presenter of BBC Radio 3’s exploratory evening show, Night Tracks, but she's one of the most individual, multifaceted composers and collaborators working in the UK today. Exploring how sounds from analogue, electronic and classical instruments can come together in energetic, epic and even intimate ways, her recent work, both in the studio and live spaces, pays testimony to her many talents.

In 2022, she released The Unfolding, a stunning collaborative album with the Paraorchestra of Great Britain, about nothing less than the beginning of the very atoms of human existence, the miraculous awakening of life, and how we all eventually return to the earth. Before that came 2021’s Fir Wave, a feast of pulsating organic techno that was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, plus acclaimed soundtracks for

film and TV (in 2020, The Deceived won a Music Guild Awards award, while 2019’s Game Of Thrones: Last Watch score bagged an Emmy nomination).

Hannah is excited about being part of Sound Unwrapped for several reasons, she tells me.

‘I love that it’s really diverse both in terms of the people involved and the genres of music, but also that offers a kind of immersive experience that I've not really seen any other venue do before. That makes it very intriguing to see how everything's going to be, and also very exciting for me to think about how I can use that as a

For starters, Sound Unwrapped has given Hannah the opportunity to perform Fir Wave live for the first time. The roots of that album come from the vintage library music label, KPM, approaching Hannah: they wondered if she’d like to rework a 1972 LP, Electrosonic, by BBC Radiophonic Workshop composers Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson alongside Australian composer Don Harper. She reworked it, of course, in her inimitable far-reaching style. During the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, she sampled its sounds, edited and reprogrammed

them to build her own digital instruments, and made new compositions. ‘But I thought that was it – I never considered it would ever be played live. Performing it is a dream, and it never would have happened without Kings Place.’

Hannah has put a new band together for the gigs. It features Hazel Mills who plays with Goldfrapp, Will Gregory’s Moog Ensemble and Supercollider (‘she’s an amazing synth wizard!’) and Alex Thomas on electronic drums and tape. ‘We’re really likeminded electronic souls, trying to do new things.’

‘a gig…should be about having an idea and really really wanting to try it.’

Hannah is also putting on another concert with virtuoso percussionist, Beibei Wang. They met when Hannah wrote a piece for the Manchester Collective in 2021 called Neon, inspired by how breath and touch help make a material that once lit up so many cities. ‘Beibei was performing with the Collective that night and we got on really well – I loved her energy.’ Neon also made Beibei nostalgic for the times she’d spent in Tokyo. She was staggered to find out that Hannah had never been there.

The new friends started talking about how music has the power to trigger memories, even when sounds may come from the imagination rather than direct experience. Hannah wondered if they could explore these ideas further by playing together. Their collaborative concert will revolve around improvisations around ideas of imaginary places, and it will be called Spirits of Eden after Talk Talk’s groundbreaking 1988 album of the same name (they’re both big fans).

The concert also provides Hannah with an opportunity to push herself out of her comfort zone. Wang is a seasoned improviser, she explains, ‘while I’ve very rarely done that on stage. I thought it would be really cool to push myself into a place that I wasn't expecting.’ She laughs. ‘Although I bet a few weeks before it, I'll be cursing myself going, “Oh, Hannah. What have you done now?” But I know a gig shouldn’t be about worrying about being proficient. It should be about having an idea and really really wanting to try it.’

17 Feb Fir Wave

16 June Hannah Peel & Beibei Wang

28 Oct Hannah Peel event feat. John Foxx

Another event is in the planning too, to be announced later in the year, Hannah confesses to me. It will involve more live performers, and an appearance from the electronic music legend John Foxx, formerly of Ultravox, who had a huge influence on her early development as a musician when she played violin and synthesisers with him in the late 2000s. ‘I can’t wait to talk to him about how our creative journeys have developed since we first worked together, and where we want to go next.’

Always pushing forward with her ideas – this is the Hannah I love, and she will add so much spirit to Sound Unwrapped, her ideas unwrapping themselves in fascinating ways through old connections and new collaborations. Let’s hope she’ll push us all out of our comfort zones, expanding our minds in the many dizzying possibilities of sound.

‘Fir Wave, a feast of pulsating organic techno, will be performed live for the first time’

Sat 11 Feb | Hall Two 8pm

Félicia Atkinson & Chris Watson

Things that are far and near contemporary soundscape

Chris Watson and Félicia Atkinson premiere their new collaborative work, Things that . Pairing recorded material gathered by Watson on trips to Japan over the last fifteen years with Atkinson's spoken word contributions, the two artists create a sonic painting of Japan. There is the sound of mountains, forests, streams, rivers, flood plains, cities and the Sea of Japan. This work will be spatialised on d&b Soundscape, offering a uniquely immersive sonic experience.

£20 + concession tickets | Co-presented with 33-33.

contemporary

Hannah Peel, Artist in Residence for Sound Unwrapped, gives the live premiere of her Mercury Music Prize shortlisted album, Fir Wave. The album, a sonic shimmer of textures and pulses that switches between raw atmospheric edges and environments, arrived in 2021 with a fascinating history. Her process of re-sampling and generating her own new digital instruments allowed for fresh inspiration from pioneering, experimental electronics by Delia Derbyshire from the early 1970s. On Fir Wave, Peel made connections and new patterns that mirror the Earth’s ecological cycles through music.

£25 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Fri 17 Feb | Hall Two 8pm

Riot Ensemble Sonic illusions

contemporary classical

Riot Ensemble unwrap works by the great American sound pioneers, James Tenney and Alvin Lucier, and deliver a world premiere by Jasmine Morris. Tenney’s spellbinding Glissade is full of searching, sliding sounds and conceptual innovation. Alvin Lucier’s duo with electric guitar Criss Cross is a meditative and rarely-heard sonic journey. The whole ensemble comes together for the world premiere of a newly-commissioned work by the young British composer Jasmine Morris before Jose Manuel Serrano’s Balbulus for solo double bass and pre-recorded double basses leaves us pondering what we are hearing…

£18.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Fri 17 Feb | Riot Ensemble

Sat 18 Feb | Hall One 7.30pm

Cosmo Sheldrake

contemporary

Cosmo Sheldrake creates music inspired by and often incorporating field recordings and natural soundscapes. For Sound Unwrapped, Cosmo will be doing a venue takeover. In Hall One he’ll perform live, presenting new and old songs, as well as improvisations using disappearing sounds of British birds and the changing sonic landscapes of coral reef fish. In Hall Two he’ll be presenting a spatialised audio installation of his 2019 record Wake Up Calls using d&b Soundscape, which ticket holders can drop into before the live show. Closing the evening is the vocal ensemble HOWL (ticketed separately) whose album Cosmo produced. (see below)

£20 + concession tickets

Sat 18 Feb | Hall Two 9pm

HOWL

contemporary

Vocal ensemble HOWL is a group of singers from disciplines ranging from folk to opera, whose recent album was produced by Cosmo Sheldrake on his label Tardigrade Records. They perform their original compositions along with arrangements of folk songs from the British Isles, contrapuntal music from Venezuela, choral works by Caroline Shaw and pieces by experimental composers Meredith Monk and Moondog, weaving in soundscapes and field recordings. Expect a lush blend of voices singing music that ranges from haunting to joyful to the downright absurd.

£12.50 + concession tickets

Fri 24 Feb | Hall Two 8pm

Flock

contemporary soundscape

Flock is a brand new collaboration between five leading musicians from London's open-minded jazz and experimental scenes: Bex Burch (Vula Viel), Sarathy Korwar, Dan “Danalogue” Leavers (The Comet Is Coming), Al MacSween (Maisha) and Tamar Osborn (Collocutor). They make their London live debut in immersive 360° sound, utilising d&b Soundscape. ‘There are resonances of Terry Riley's early minimalism, Sun Ra's space jazz, Maghrebi trance music, Javanese tuned-percussion music, Jon Hassell's audio collages, and Tony Scott's Music For Zen Meditation’. All About Jazz

£18.50 + concession tickets

Sat 11 Mar | Hall Two 8pm

Laura Misch & Sofie Birch

contemporary soundscape

An exclusive for Sound Unwrapped, this unmissable collaboration brings together South London songwriter, saxophonist and electronic producer Laura Misch with Danish sound artist and producer, Sofie Birch. Expect a dreamlike concoction of Misch’s future jazz-leaning electronica and Birch’s ambient sonic tapestries, weaving electronic hardware, live instrumentation and field recordings.

£17.50 + concession tickets

Programme 2023

Sat 18 Feb | Cosmo Sheldrake

Sun 19 Mar | Hall Two 7pm

Hinako Omori + Torus

contemporary soundscape

A sumptuous double bill featuring Hinako Omori, a musician and composer based in London, originally from Japan, and Torus, an artist, DJ and producer who lives and works in The Hague. Bringing together therapeutic frequencies, forest bathing, and binaural sound, Omori's 2022 album 'a journey...' combines inner healing and natural landscapes into an immersive cartography of the mind in ambient electronics. Torus treats dance music as a tool to reflect on the politics and aesthetics of pop culture. Toying with the structures and forms of sub genres such as trance, electronic and many harder styles, and bringing a critical and adventurous stance to any stage.

£16.50 + concession tickets

| Hall Two 8pm

Fri 24 Mar | Hall Two 8pm

Manchester Collective Black Angels

contemporary classical

Gabriella Smith Carrot Revolution

Edmund Finnis String Quartet No. 2

Moor Mother New Work – World Premiere

Franz Schubert Death and the Maiden, II.

George Crumb Black Angels

Manchester Collective Amplified String Quartet

Rakhi Singh Music Director

George Crumb’s Black Angels is about as close as you’ll get to an acid trip without breaking the law. Subtitled ‘Thirteen Images from the Dark Land’, it’s a cult work for a reason – once you hear it, you’ll never forget it. And for this concert, it will be performed in immersive Soundscape. Themes of death in Crumb’s piece find echoes in Schubert’s corruscating Death and the Maiden. Elsewhere, the Collective present a brand-new commission by New York hip-hop artist, activist, poet and composer Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother). The set is completed by Edmund Finnis’ transcendent 2nd string quartet and Gabriella Smith’s fast and furious Carrot . This is not music for the faint of heart. Come, journey into the black of the night.

£20 + Under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Moin is composed of Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead (Raime /Blackest Ever Black) as well as long-time collaborator and visionary percussionist Valentina Magaletti (Tomaga / Vanishing Twin). , their 2022 follow up to acclaimed Moot!, draws influences from alternative guitar music in its many forms, using electronic manipulations and sampling techniques to redefine its context, not settling on any one style but moving through them in search of new connections. By exploring these relationships, Moin delivers another collage of the known and unknown, punctuated by words that are just out of reach.

£17.50 + concession tickets

Sun 19 Mar | Hinako Omori

Fri 24 Mar | Moor Mother

Sun 26 Mar | Hall Two 11am

Inner Temple

Christina McMaster & Tom Middleton

contemporary classical

Christina McMaster Piano

Tom Middleton Sound Artist/Wellness Music Pioneer

A unique electro-acoustic collaboration between pianist Christina McMaster and wellness music pioneer and ambient composer Tom Middleton, experienced lying down for conscious listening. Inspired by the work and life of Hildegard Von Bingen, expect to experience real-time sound transformations across multiple modes via immersive surround speakers to fully envelop you as Tom leverages the d&b Soundscape system, while sculpting the acoustic piano to guide you within to your personal ‘Inner Temple’ of sound.

£25.00 + concession tickets

Fri 31 Mar | Hall Two 8.30pm

Salamanda

contemporary

Salamanda is the Seoul-based leftfield ambient duo of Uman Therma (Sala) and Yetsuby (Manda). The duo believe every sound has its own beauty, and create imagined worlds with an organic palette of sounds and glimmering textures. Their albums released on international labels including Good Morning Tapes, Small Méasures and Human Pitch have earned praise from Crack Magazine, Pitchfork, Resident Advisor and many others.

£16.50 + concession tickets

| Hall One 8pm

Explore Ensemble

contemporary classical

Rebecca Saunders murmurs

Catherine Lamb Parallaxis

Forma*

Beat Furrer Spur

Beatrice Dillon Seven

Reorganisations

Explore Ensemble

*Lotte Betts-Dean vocalist

Explore Ensemble presents music that spans the extremes of harmony, noise, speed, and space. Rebecca Saunders’ murmurs engulfs the audience in a tapestry of umbral textures and expressive melodic fragments, while Catherine Lamb’s Parallaxis Forma, with vocalist Lotte BettsDean, sinks ever deeper into vivid hues of radiant just intonation harmonies and wordless song. Beat Furrer’s Spur returns to noise, with its ultra-fast matrix of shifting sonic patterns and rhythmic mechanisms. Beatrice Dillon’s Seven Reorganisations dives into acoustic reimaginings of electronic sounds and generative processes.

See website for details

Fri 31 Mar | Salamanda

Fri 28 Apr | Vox Luminis

Fri Apr 14 | Hall Two 8pm

Marina Herlop

Pripyat

contemporary

Marina Herlop might be best known as a classically-trained pianist, but her music goes far beyond her beginnings. The Catalan artist took a stylistic leap on her third album – the PAN-released Pripyat – subverting the piano and vocals of her first two albums with computeraided electronics and unsettling threedimensional effects. She was influenced by the vast possibilities of her voice, aiming to unhook it from Western training, looking to South Indian Carnatic music for direction. The result is a sound that bends pop music's often rigid framework, breaking classical traditions and surprising at every turn.

£16.50 | Co-presented by Eat Your Own Ears

Sat 15 Apr | Hall One 5.30pm + 8pm

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Let’s Turn It Into Sound

contemporary

For Sound Unwrapped, acclaimed West Coast synth composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith presents her most ambitious, intuitive, and inviting work to date. 2022’s Let's Turn It Into Sound favors a more baroque and robust form of avant-pop than Smith’s earlier ambient and contemporary new age productions. Across vibrant and visceral songs, the music bursts with vertiginous vocal harmonies and detailed sound design, forming a truly unique sonic vision, enhanced further by her use of a motioncapture suit for the record's visuals.

Co-presented by Parallel Lines

Fri 28 Apr | Hall One 7.30pm

Vox Luminis Light & Shadow

classical

Thomas Tallis O nata lux,Videte miraculum

Robert White Christe qui lux es et dies

John Sheppard In manus tuas I

William Byrd Ave verum corpus

Thomas Tomkins When David heard

Robert Ramsey How are the mighty fall’n

Thomas Weelkes O Jonathan, woe is me -

Death hath deprived me

Thomas Morley Nolo mortem peccatoris

Thomas Tallis Hear the voice and prayer

John Sheppard In pace

Thomas Morley Funeral sentences

Vox Luminis

Lionel Meunier director

We welcome the peerless voices of Vox Luminis for a spatial and spiritual journey, as they use the different spaces of Hall One for performances of Tallis, Byrd, Sheppard, Morley and Weelkes. This programme follows the course of a man who entrusts, gets lost, sees himself destroyed and seems to be able to rise just before his encounter with death. The different positions of the singers throughout the concert add extra depth, resonance and meaning to the quest from the darkness towards the light.

£19.50 - £44.50 + under 30s £8.50 +concession tickets

Fri Apr 14 | Marina Herlop

Sat 15 Apr | Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Labour exchange

Joe Muggs introduces the shapeshifting work of Space Afrika, aka Joshua Inyang and Joshua Reid, Artists in Residence for Sound Unwrapped

What's startling about Space Afrika is the way each move they make illuminates what came before. Their early EPs were broadly techno, and sounded lo-fi, but when the ultrafinessed space dub of Somewhere Decent to Live came along in 2018 it threw into relief just how deliberate every minuscule textural detail had been on its predecessors. Then their NTS radio shows and hybtwibt? (Have You Been Through What I’ve Been Through?) mixtape in 2020 used that textural detail to make potent political and philosophical statements – which added new weight and intent if you listened back to Somewhere Decent to Live. All of this in turn was transformed for listeners when 2021’s Honest Labour dropped: its huge dynamic range, its incorporation of other voices and visuals, its compositional rigour, all showed Space Afrika’s spectacular ambition and how they embodied the networks they rose out of. Again, the work before made new sense, as precursors to this grand statement, its forms and themes echoing backwards in time. And this new presentation at Kings Place of Honest Labour with orchestra will throw a whole different light on it.

None of which is to say that Josh Inyang and Josh Reid had this all planned out. They didn’t decide when they started making techno tracks that Honest Labour was a few years down the line. But it’s the natural corollary of the way they work and who they are: they represent a culture that’s do-it-yourself in the truest sense, that is about a constant accumulation of materials and tools from their environment to express what they’re going through. They were collagists from the start, piecing together their identities as young Black Britons, northerners, Mancunians, scholars, clubbers, artists, as participants in a diverse music scene, all into a coherent whole. And Space Afrika is a collage across the entire existence of the project. While each release or broadcast remains discrete, it also forms part of a greater flow of those identities and influences, where the essences of Joy Division and Dizzee Rascal, of Echospace and Wu Tang Clan, of cyberpunk and Coronation Street, all make sense together.

28 Jan Space Afrika

Honest Labour

Jul (date tbc) Space Afrika presents...

Oct (date tbc) Space Afrika

d&b Soundscape set

And it’s not just about Inyang and Reid. The cavalcade of renegades who appear on Honest Labour show this is a collage of people as much as ideas and, more than that, the demonstration of how different parts of identity and sound work in a living collage is a model for a generation. This is the generation where oppositions of underground and mainstream mean little, where ‘Black music’ can mean indie, ambient, classical and/or deconstructed club just as much as it means soul, jazz, drill or grime, where what matters is less your genre than your aesthetic: how you reflect the overwhelming tides of information that mingle uniquely around you. Which is what Space Afrika do, so gloriously. From the beginning they created an aesthetic that is meticulously made from parts that only they could choose, and as they step onto bigger and bigger stages that aesthetic – even the parts that they’ve already crystallised – grows with them.

'They were collagists from the start, piecing together their identities as young Black Britons, as northerners, as Mancunians, as scholars, as clubbers, as artists...'

Fri 28 Apr | Hall Two 8pm

Stick in the Wheel

folk soundscape

East London duo Stick in the Wheel's intense live shows explore the raw holler of folk, electronics, spoken word and intricate psychedelic guitar. Fullforce reworkings of centuries-old work-songs and texts speak to contemporary issues of class - an inherently political act. Their relentless approach to questioning traditional music forms is matched only by the energy with which they play it. Full of hope and resistance, they celebrate music from our collective histories - conjuring the past to point toward the future. This special show will create immersive, spatial versions of tracks old and new using d&b audiotechnik's Soundscape system.

£18.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin

pop group Vanishing Twin and improvisational duo Tomaga in the 2010s, Magaletti’s collaborative instinct and skill have seen her record and perform with Nicolas Jaar, Thurston Moore, Bat for Lashes, Gruff Rhys and many more. Performing solo utilising d&b Soundscape, expect free jazz, drone and percussive elements to meet sound system frequencies to devastating effect.

£16.50 + concession tickets

Earlier this year, legendary Chicago label Drag City quietly Ghosted, a transcendent collaboration between Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin. The trio connected in 2018 at Stockholm's Studio Rymden, focusing their powers on the fertile space between Steve Reich's classical minimalism and Talk Talk's emotional fluidity. Australian guitarist Ambarchi is one of the experimental scene's most recognisable figures, with iconic albums on Kranky, Editions Mego and his own Black Truffle label, while Swedish bassist Johan Berthling is best known for performing in bands such as Fire! and Tape. Drummer Andreas Werliin completes the puzzle, bringing his varied experience playing with Wildbirds & Peacedrums and Fire!

£22.50 + concession tickets

| Hall One 7pm

Fri 28 Apr | Stick in the Wheel

Sun 7 May | Valentina Magaletti

Fri 26 May | Hall One 8pm

12 Ensemble & GBSR Duo

contemporary

Mica Levi Lonely Void from Under the Skin

Mica Levi Love from Under the Skin

Fausto Romitelli Flowing down too slow

Laurence Osborn TOMB!

Harold Budd/Brian Eno, (arr. 12 Ensemble & GBSR Duo) Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror

GBSR Duo and 12 Ensemble combine to explore ascent and descent: visions of heaven and hell from the lonely void of Mica Levi to Harold Budd & Brian Eno’s glittering, suspended Ambient 2 in a new arrangement by the performers. Before that, Laurence Osborn's new work TOMB! uses the genre of the ‘tombeau’ to take a sideways look at classical music's death fixation.

£25 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Fri 26 May | Hall Two 8pm

Crick Crack Club Storytelling in The Dark

word

The Crick Crack Club cooks up an experiment of wild uncertainty. Come with us into the unmapped terrain of stories told in the dark, shot through with enchantment, transformation, things lost, things found, grown-up fairytale and weird myth. Here, your ears will be your guide, and anything you see happens in the cinema of your imagination. Voices, stories, you, and your companionswhoever they may be. Follow us into the dark. Suitable for adults .

£15 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Sat 3 Jun | Hall Two 6pm + 8pm

Robert Henke Dust

contemporary soundscape

Pioneering composer, artist and software developer Robert Henke is known for his contributions to contemporary electronic music, as both a composer and co-creator of the music software Ableton Live. Turning matter into particles, relentless, agitating, wild, or calm, quiet and intricate, Henke’s granular surround sound performance ‘Dust’ is a wild journey into a vast sonic world. Based on field recordings captured whilst traveling around the planet, collected and archived during more than twenty five years, Dust is an ever growing and mutating improvised work. New materials replace older ones, new algorithms provoke new results and no two performances are alike. His performances for Sound Unwrapped will make use of the power of the d&B audiotechnik Soundscape system.

£20

Fri 26 May | 12 Ensemble

Sat 3 Jun | Robert Henke

The amorphous

takes shape

April Clare Welsh assesses the diversity of artists in Sound Unwrapped who are taking ambient music in new directions

‘As the world has moved towards becoming an information ocean, so music has become immersive. Listeners float in that ocean; musicians have become virtual travellers, creators of sonic theatre, transmitters of all the signals received across the either,’ wrote David Toop in the prologue to his 1995 book on ambient music, Ocean of Sound. This amorphous artform has travelled a long way since its loose beginnings in Erik Satie’s ‘furniture music’ of the early 20th century, and the digital age continues to append even more layers of intertextuality and innovation to the ambient canon. These days, contemporary artists like Lucrecia Dalt, Félicia Atkinson and Nikki Sheth variously interpret history, nature, culture, and tradition to break new ground in sound art and embodied listening experiences.

The ambient and minimalist pantheons have been historically dominated by white male artists, but, back in the ‘1960s, Éliane Radigue’s tape loop and synthesiser experiments were a breath of fresh air in the stagnant boys’ club. Over in Japan, Tokyo-born composer and percussionist Midori Takada - performing in September – smashed through the glass ceiling in the 1980s to emerge with a string of hypnotic works that served to refresh the scene.

Takada described her 1983 cult masterpiece Through the Looking Glass as her version of ‘three-dimensional music’. Drawing from Indonesian Gamelan, Ghanaian, Senegalese and Burkinabè percussion traditions, and enriched with marimba, gongs, and flutes fashioned from Coca-Cola bottles, the LP

was wildly underappreciated at the time but later lavished with attention thanks to a 2017 reissue

by Palto Flats and We Release Whatever

The Fuck We Want Records. Takada went on to more recordings and to earn plaudits for her live shows, pouring decades of knowhow and experimentation into spellbinding performances.

Félicia Atkinson and BBC sound recordist Chris Watson’s collaborative work, Things that are far and near, also transports us to Japan via a cache of field recordings collected by Watson during his travels around the country. Natural sounds gleaned from the mountains to the sea form the backbone of the project, which are then toyed with and augmented by Félicia Atkinson, whose spoken word offerings humanise the soundscapes. Atkinson is an avant-garde composer and experimental poet whose hushed vocal whisperings have been likened to the internet-originating phenomenon of ASMR. Merging 20th century classical music influences with a magpie-like 21st century mindset, her abstract fever dreams are mottled with musical titbits, from blasts of noirish saxophone to droning organ, but their non-linearity disrupts the soothing narrative commonly associated with the ambient lexicon.

Similarly, Colombian vocalist, producer and former geotechnical engineer Lucrecia Dalt creates multiple sound worlds while wielding her voice like an instrument. She’ll be presenting a new duo show based on her 2022 LP ¡Ay!; a weighty ‘sci-fi’ concept album about an extraterrestrial being named Preta who winds up on Earth. The LP was influenced in part by Nicolas Roeg’s David Bowie-starring 1976 movie The Man Who Fell to Earth. On ¡Ay!, Dalt revisits the bolero, son, cumbia and Latin American genres she grew up with through a thicket of congas, double bass and more instrumentation. Fluid and freewheeling, her experimental meditations play around with nostalgia and the concept of time.

From sound-mapping and soundwalking to capturing site-specific field recordings, award-winning Birmingham-based composer Nikki Sheth covers the wide spectrum of sound art in her experiments with space and location. Forging participatory listening and immersing her audience in atmospheric sound through her employment of multichannel and ambisonic spatial audio, Sheth examines themes relating to identity, culture, and nature. For Sound Unwrapped, she joins a cohort of experimental Black and South Asian sound artists – NikNak, Dhangsha, Poulomi Desai, Gary Stewart, and Dushume – in confronting institutionalised whiteness as part of Nonclassical presents: Disruptive Frequencies, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Throughout her pioneering practice, the late legendary Pauline Oliveros stressed the difference between hearing and listening: ‘I feel that listening is the basis of creativity and culture. How you’re listening, is how you develop a culture and how a community of people listens, is what creates their culture.’ For this iteration of Sound Unwrapped, we are encouraged to consider new ways of listening and sensing.

‘In the 1980s Midori Takada smashed through the glass ceiling to emerge with a string of hypnotic works’

Sat 10 Jun | Hall Two 8pm

Rakhi Singh Soundscape Solos

contemporary

Since co-founding Manchester Collective in 2016, violinist Rakhi Singh has become an increasingly familiar name to those in both classical and experimental music circles. She's toured with Hiromi and Philip Glass, directed her first Prom with Manchester Collective and composed and collaborated with Clark, Vessel and NYX Electronic Drone Choir. For Sounds Unwrapped, Singh will perform works adapted and spatialised for d&b Soundscape, including work by Wolfe, Gordon, Matteis and Groves.

£18.50 + concession tickets

Fri 16 Jun | Hall One 8pm

Hannah Peel & Beibei Wang Spirit of Edens

contemporary

Fascinated by the interplay of human and electronic rhythm, Hannah Peel collaborates with virtuosic percussionist Beibei Wang to explore how sound can evoke place. Combining their unique collection of synths, Chinese drums, gongs and water percussion, they aim to bring many worlds, seasons and cities onto the stage. Hannah Peel and Beibei Wang first collaborated on a recording of Hannah’s Neon for the Manchester Collective, a piece that conjured the Shinjuku suburb of Toyko through sound. Beibei was surprised that Hannah had so perfectly invoked a sense of place connected to somewhere she had never visited.

£19.50 - £25 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Sat 17 Jun | Hall Two 8pm

Laura Cannell

Antiphony of the Trees

contemporary

The captivating performercomposer Laura Cannell presents the live version of her album Antiphony of the Trees. This multilayered work, created in Laura’s studio by manipulating live recorder playing with delay and reverb, is recreated in an exciting live show by transforming and diffusing the sound in the space to recreate the sonic world of the album with the use of pedals, and roaming speakers attached to performers, an immersive journey inside the treetops. From slow chordal drones to the sound of rapidly beating wings, she plays all the parts of all the birds: the hoarders, the gatherers and the sacred birds.

£18.50 + under 30s £8.50

Fri 16 Jun | Beibei Wang

Sat 10 Jun | Rakhi Singh

Sat 24 Jun | Hall One 8pm

London Sinfonietta Turning Points: Sound Unwrapped

contemporary

Jonathan Harvey Ricercare una Melodia (solo instrument + tape)

Kaija Saariaho NoaNoa (solo flute and electronics)

Luciano Berio Naturale (for viola, percussion & tape)

David Fennessy The Room is the Resonator (solo cello and live electronics)

Dai Fujikura K's Ocean (solo trombone and live electronics)

Ailis ni Rian new work  (solo cello and tape)

Christian Mason I wandered for a while (spatialised picc, cello, piano, bells + electronics)

A programme of electro-acoustic music and manipulated sound, with live performance in dialogue with electronics, delving into the early innovations by twentieth-century composers alongside their modern-day counterparts. The pre-concert event explores AI in composition, while the late night session in Hall Two will include spatialised versions of classic and new electro-acoustic works. £22.50

Sat 24 Jun | Hall Two 9pm

London Sinfonietta

Late Night

contemporary soundscape

Karlheinz Stockhausen Gesang der Jünglinge

Edgard Varèse Poème

Electronique

See website for details

Sat 15 Jul | Hall Two 7pm

Nonclassical Disruptive frequencies

contemporary

Nonclassical presents the launch release party for Disruptive Frequencies evening of experimental sounds by Black and South Asian artists NikNak, Dhangsha, Nikki Sheth, Poulomi Desai, Gary Stewart and Dushume. This AHRC funded project aims to challenge institutional whiteness in experimental sound practice by investigating the creative identities of contemporary Black and South Asian composers working in the UK.

£15

Sun 16 July I Hall One 7pm

Genesis Sixteen & friends

Spem in allium

classical Programme to include Thomas Tallis: Spem in Allium

Genesis Sixteen and their alumni combine to perform Tallis’s monumental 40-part motet in the gallery and stage of Hall One, in a programme that spaces the singers around the audience.

£19.50 - 39.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Sat 15 Jul | Poulomi Desai

Fri 22 Sep | Hall One 7.30pm

Aurora Orchestra Anno

contemporary

Nico Muhly All perfections keep Caroline Shaw new work for harpsichord and strings (Parabola Foundation commission, UK premiere)

JS Bach Keyboard concerto in D minor BWV 1052

Anna Meredith Anno

Kit Armstrong harpsichord

Matthew Gee trombone

Alexandra Wood violin / direct

Anna Meredith’s Anno (2016) is a vivid 21st-century re-imagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in which Meredith takes excerpts and loops, reorders and reinterprets them, weaving fragments together with her own interstitial music, drum machine cross-rhythms and recorded birdsong. The result is something at once familiar and wholly new, into which the audience is deeply immersed through surround-sound amplification. This concert also features the UK premiere of Pulitzer Prizewinning composer Caroline Shaw’s new work for Aurora, commissioned by Parabola Foundation, and featuring the dazzling Kit Armstrong on harpsichord, who also performs JS Bach’s D minor keyboard concerto.

£19.50 - £69.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Midori Takada

contemporary

Verdant utopias, meditative caves and abundant life. Japanese percussionist Midori Takada invokes entire ecosystems —her music connecting mind and soul to tree and soil. Takada’s 1981 album

Through the Looking Glass is considered an essential recording of minimalist music. Don’t expect to hear this work though, Takada is constantly pushing forward. Now 70 years of age, Takada is a maestro. Wielding xylophone, marimba, gongs and theatrical physicality, her performances go beyond the musical to transcend through rhythm. ‘The sight of Midori Takada whiplashing between drums, cymbals and marimba is something few observers forget. She is a mesmerising performer of great physical intensity.’ The Guardian

Sat 23 Sep I Midori Takada

Fri 29 Sept | Hall One 7.30pm

Monteverdi 1610 Vespers I Fagiolini & English Sackbutts and Cornetts

classical

Robert Hollingworth conductor

For the first time in Hall One, a performance of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, using both stage and galleries. As Robert Hollingworth of I Fagiolini writes: ‘After many years, I Fagiolini returns to this iconic, if misunderstood, work with a truly stellar line-up of performers dipped in the Monteverdi cauldron when young.  Much of the glory of the Vespers’ psalm settings is in their detail, too often lost in the vast acoustics of many venues.  Monteverdi even suggests the more intimate ‘chapels or chambers of princes’ for the book’s motets. Experimenting with Hall One’s acoustic clarity, close balconies and up to date with the latest research, I Fagiolini & English Sackbutts and Cornetts offer an intimate guide to this defining work.

£24.50-59.50 + concession tickets

Sat 30 Sep | Hall Two 8pm

Zubin Kanga Cyborg Soloists with Shiva Feshareki

contemporary

Pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga launches an album featuring new works which use innovative technologies to melt and morph the piano’s sounds, with digital instruments, motion sensors, AI-generated sounds and interactive video. Laura Bowler’s MiMU sensor gloves, live video and social media avatars. Emily Howard envelops the piano in clouds of sound generated through a machine-learning neural network.

Oliver Leith combines cutting-edge TouchKeys keyboard with classic synthesizers, while Laurence Osborn pushes the limits of virtuosity between piano and keyboards. Shiva Feshareki joins Zubin for a virtuosic duo where piano combines with turntables and electronics swirling around the audience via a multi-speaker array.

£18.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Sun 1

Oct | Hall One 7pm

Eliane Radigue Occam Ocean

contemporary

Rhodri Davies harp

Angharad Davies violin

Hélène Breschand harp

Dominic Lash double bass

Éliane Radigue (b 1932) is regarded as one of the most innovative and influential composers working today. Up until 2000, she produced electronic works. Since then, she has composed mostly for acoustic instruments, and from 2011, exclusively in collaboration with individual performers, working with the musician’s personal technique and relationship to their instrument, using solely oral and aural means of transmission rather than written scores. The resulting body of 80 pieces, the series Occam Ocean, are specific to those performers, rather than to their instruments. For their performance at Kings Place, musicians Helene Breschand, Angharad Davies and Rhodri Davies will perform various combinations of solo pieces (Occams) and duo pieces (Rivers) in varying configurations. The concert will showcase the premiere of a new duo piece for two harps.

See website for details

Thu 12 Oct I St Martin in the Fields 7.30pm

Gesualdo Six & Matilda Lloyd

Radiant Dawn

classical

Thomas Tallis O nata lux,

Dum transisset Sabbatum

Robert White Christe qui lux es et dies (II)

Alec Roth Night Prayer

Owain Park Phos hilaron

Hildegard von Bingen O gloriosissimi

Donna McKevitt Lumen

Richard Barnard Aura

Deborah Pritchard The Light Thereof

Orlande de Lassus Ave maris stella

James MacMillan O radiant dawn, In splendoribus sanctorum

Gesualdo Six

Matilda Lloyd trumpet

Owain Park director

Vocal consort The Gesualdo Six join forces with trumpeter Matilda Lloyd to present a stunning programme that explores different sonorities and spatial relationships within the church of St Martin in the Fields. Works from the Golden Age of polyphony by Tallis and White are juxtaposed with new compositions by Alec Roth and Deborah Pritchard. Highlights include Sir James MacMillan’s ‘In splendoribus sanctorum’, a meditative and atmospheric setting from the composer’s ‘Strathclyde Motets’, alongside Richard Barnard’s Aura, co-commissioned by the artists.

See website for details

Sat

Many

Sat 2 Dec | Shiva Feshareki

Sat 25 Nov | Hall Two 8pm

Aurora Orchestra

In the light of air

contemporary soundscape

Anna Thorvaldsdottir In the Light of Air

Music by Adès, Takemitsu and Debussy

Principal players of Aurora Orchestra

Aurora presents an immersive performance of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s In the Light of Air. Scored for viola, cello, piano, harp percussion and electronics, the piece is described by Gramophone as ‘an exquisite tetralogy in which melodies are thrown up by the music’s very exploration of sound and texture… a musical perusal of light and air, and of visibility, temperature and geology.’

Presented in the round in Hall Two with theatrical lighting and players within touching distance of the audience, Thorvaldsdottir’s 40-minute work is paired here with music by Thomas Adès, Tōru Takemitsu and Claude Debussy.

£24.50 + concession tickets

Sat 2 Dec | Hall Two 8pm

Shiva Feshareki with Sean Shibe

Seismic Orchestra Wave

contemporary soundscape

Turntablist and composer Shiva Feshareki joins forces with radical guitarist Sean Shibe for a performance of her Seismic Orchestra Wave diffused through Soundscape. Shibe will create new spatialised sound performances of Reich’s Electric Counterpoint and Julius Eastman’s Bhudda

See website for details

Booking

Tickets for all performances available on the website. A 10% booking fee will be applied to all ticket bookings, with a maximum charge of £4.50 per transaction. Fees do not apply to bookings or ticket collections made in person at the Box Office.

Under-30s Tickets

A limited number of Under-30s (£8.50; no booking fee) tickets are available for specially selected events at Kings Place, ranging from classical concerts to jazz and world music. Terms and conditions apply. For more information, please visit our website or call the Box Office.

Concession Tickets

A new Concession Ticket scheme will be available from January 2023 providing an allocation of discounted tickets on the majority of events for students and those in receipt of any benefit or financial support (eg Pension, Disability, Universal Credit).

Returns policy

Tickets cannot be refunded or exchanged except where a concert is cancelled or postponed, or when it is sold out and the ticket can be resold.

Online

Secure 24-hour online booking kingsplace.co.uk

Box Office

The box office is open (in person and over the phone) every day there is an event on. Our lines are open from an hour before the first show of the day and close when the last show of the day begins. The Box Office and phone lines will always be open from 5pm on the evening of an event. You are advised to get in touch with specific queries via email: info@ kingsplace.co.uk

The Venues

Hall One

Hall One is a seated venue with state-of-the-art fresh air ventilation for your comfort. The majority of events in Hall One have allocated seats but some will be general admission.

Hall Two

All seating is general admission. Some events may have a combination of seating and standing, and some standing only.

St Pancras Room

All seating is general admission. Some events may be standing only with limited number of seats bookable.

Access

We aim to make your visit to Kings Place as comfortable as possible. Kings Place is fully accessible for wheelchairusers, with lifts from ground floor to concert level, and multiple wheelchair-accessible toilets.

An infrared system is available in both Hall One and Hall Two. All areas are accessible to those with Guide and Hearing Dogs. To help us give you the best possible experience, please inform the Box Office team of your access requirements either by emailing info@kingsplace.co.uk or by calling 020 7520 1490 during opening hours. The full Access Guide can be found on the website. An access scheme will be launched in 2023.

Arriving late

We will endeavour to seat latecomers at a suitable break in the performance, according to the artists’ instructions, although this may not always be possible and in some instances latecomers may not be admitted at all. Tickets are non-refundable.

Taking pictures

The use of cameras, video or sound recording equipment is strictly prohibited during performances, concerts and exhibitions. Kings Place may take pictures during your visit that are later used for promotional purposes. Please put phones on airplane mode during all performances.

Food & Drink Policy

Please note that food is not permitted inside our venues. Please ensure that all drinks are decanted into the plastic cups provided prior to entering our venues. Red wine is not permitted inside Hall One.

Security Bag Policy

To make your visit as safe, secure and enjoyable as possible, we have enhanced our security. This includes the introduction of bag checks upon entry to our venues. Any bags which are larger than 30x50cm will need to be checked into our Cloakroom on Concert Level -2.

Food & Drink

Rotunda Bar & Restaurant is the perfect place to dine and enjoy a drink when attending a performance. With its waterside setting, and a range of dining options including a full à la carte menu, great value preperformance menu, light postperformance supper, as well as a selection of smaller nibbles and bar food, there is something to suit everybody. However if it’s just a drink you’re after, Rotunda also has a great range of beers and wine for a pre- or postperformance tipple. 020 7014 2840.

The Concert Bar is situated adjacent to the concert halls. Place your interval order at the bar prior to the start of the performance and your drinks will be waiting for you. If the bar is closed, drinks can be purchased from Rotunda Bar.

Hall One Hall Two

St Pancras Room

Rotunda Bar & Restaurant

Journey

Kings Place is situated just a few minutes’ walk from King’s Cross and St Pancras stations, one of the most connected locations in London and now the biggest transport hub in Europe.

Public transport

The Transport for London Journey Planner provides live travel updates and options on how to reach Kings Place quickly and accurately. You can also call London Travel Information on 0343 222 1234.

Tube

The nearest tube station is King’s Cross St Pancras, on the Circle, Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines. The station has step-free access from platform to street level. The quickest way to Kings Place is via the new King’s Boulevard. You can also walk up York Way.

Editorial Team

Publisher Kings Place Music Foundation

Contact

020 7520 1440 info@kingsplace.co.uk

Art Direction

Binomi (binomi.co.uk)

Editorial

Helen Wallace

Jacob Silkin

Joanna Woodley

Damien Stewart

James Kinnaird (online)

Samira Pereira

Lucy Furneaux

Printer Indigo Press (indigo-press.com)

Bus

The 390 bus route runs along York Way. Other services running nearby are routes 10, 17, 30, 45, 46, 59, 63, 73, 91, 205, 214, 259 & 476.

Car

Kings Place is outside the Congestion Charge Zone. The nearest car park is at St Pancras Station on Pancras Road, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week including Bank Holidays. An alternative space is Handyside Car Park in the Tapestry building on Canal Reach, open 8am-10pm, 7 days a week including Bank Holidays.

Bike

Santander Cycle docking stations are located on Goods Way and on the corner of Crinan Street and York Way. For updates and cycling routes please visit tfl.gov.uk/cycling

Image credits

CentralSaintMartins

Programming

Helen Wallace (Executive & Artistic Director)

Rosie Chapman

(Head of Artistic Planning)

Jacob Silkin

(Senior Programme Manager, Contemporary)

Rebecca Millican

(Programme Manager)

With thanks to With thanks to Peter Millican OBE, and the whole team at Kings Place Music Foundation.

The greatest care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of information in this magazine at the time of going to press, but we accept no responsibility for omissions or errors. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of Kings Place.

© Kings Place 2023. All material is strictly copyright and all rights are reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of Kings Place is strictly forbidden.

p5 Colin Currie Group

© Nick White | p6 Liam Byrne

© Suzanne Plunkett | p6 NikNak

© Sophie Jouvenaar| p7 The Breath © Duncan Elliott; The Sixteen, supplied photo | p8

Christina McMaster © Carlos Lumiere; Gildas Quartet © Matthew Johnson | p9 Lucrecia

Dalt © Aina Climent | p11 Hannah

Peel © Pål Hansen | p13 Riot Ensemble © Matthew Johnson | p14 Cosmo Sheldrake © Peter Flude | p15 Hinoko Omori © Annie lai; Moor Mother © Bob Sweeney | p18 Salamanda supplied photo; Vox Luminis © Mario Leko | p19 Marina Herlop © Anxo

Casals; Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, supplied photo | p20 Space Afrika © Frankie Casillo | p22 | Stick in the Wheel, supplied photo; Valentina Magaletti © Giovanna Sodano | p23 12 Ensemble © Raphael Neal; Robert Henke, supplied photo | p26 Rakhi Singh © Phil Sharp; Beibei Wang © Mike Skelton | p27 Poulomi Desai, supplied photo | p28 | Kit Armstrong © Marco Borggreve; Midori Takada, supplied photo | p29 I Fagiolini © Matthew Brodie | p30 Shiva Feshareki, supplied photo | p31 Hall One, Hall Two, St Pancras Room © Nick White; Rotunda Bar, supplied photo

Sound Unwrapped is supported by Arts Council England through its National Lottery Project Grants programme.

In difficult times, people turn to the arts as a source of respite and wonder. As the cost-of-living crisis bites, we’re launching concessions tickets to ensure that live performance isn’t a luxury.

A donation of £15 to the Audience Fund could pay for one concession ticket to a performance at Kings Place for someone who may not otherwise be able to afford it.

LIVE PERFORMANCE IS LIFE ENRICHING. LET’S KEEP IT ACCESSIBLE TO ALL.

Donate at kingsplace.co.uk/ AudienceFund or scan the QR code below.

Thu 19 & Sat 21 Jan

Moonbathing

360° Sound Installation

Fri 20 Jan

Colin Currie Quartet

Dark Full Ride

Fri 20 Jan

Sat 11 Mar

Laura Misch & Sofie Birch

Sun 19 Mar

Hinako Omori + Torus

Fri 24 Mar

Sat 3 Jun

Robert Henke

Dust – UK Premiere

Sat 10 Jun

Rakhi Singh

Fri 16 Jan

Hannah Peel & BeiBei

Wang

Spirit of Edens

Sat 17 Jun

Laura Cannell

Antiphony of the Trees

Sat 24 Jun

London Sinfonietta

Turning Points: Sound

Unwrapped

Sat 24 Jun

London Sinfonietta

Late Night

Occam Ocean

Thu 12 Oct

Gesualdo Six & Matilda

Lloyd

Radiant Dawn

Sat 28 Oct

Hannah Peel Curation

Ft. John Foxx

Gildas Quartet

Britten in Surround Sound

Sun 29 Jan

Lucrecia Dalt

¡Ay!

Fri 3 Feb

Aurora Orchestra with Timothy Orpen

Supersonic

Sat 4 Feb

Holy Other + Malibu

Sat 11 Feb

Félicia Atkinson & Chris Watson

Things that are far and near

Fri 17 Feb

Hannah Peel

Fir Wave, Live Premiere

Fri 17 Feb

Riot Ensemble

Sonic Illusions

Sat 18 Feb

Cosmo Sheldrake

Sat 18 Feb

HOWL

Fri 24 Feb

Flock

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Let’s Turn It Into Sound

Fri 28 Apr

Vox Luminis

Light & Shadow

Fri 28 Apr Stick In The Wheel

Sat 15 Jul

Nonclassical Disruptive Frequencies

Sun 16 Jul

Genesis

Sixteen & Friends

Spem In Allium

Fri 22 Sep

Aurora Orchestra

ANNO

Sat 23 Sep

Sun 7 May

Valentina Magaletti

Sun 14 May

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling & Andreas Werliin

Ghosted

Fri 26 May 12 Ensemble & GBSR Duo

Fri 26 May

Crick Crack Club

Storytelling in The Dark

Midori Takada

Fri 29 Sep

I Fagiolini

Monteverdi 1610 Vespers

Sat 25 Nov

Aurora Orchestra with Anna Thorvaldsdottir

In The Light of Air

Sun 3 Dec

Shiva Feshareki with Sean Shibe

Seismic Orchestra

Wave