Thursday 1 May

Rhoē explores the fluid interplay between sound and the human body. This piece for piano and live electronics integrates biometric data, such as brainwaves, heart rates, and galvanic skin responses. Advanced algorithms map these physiological signals into the electroacoustic soundscape, allowing the music to evolve in real time. The piano’s organic tones meld with the electronic textures, creating a dynamic and ever-changing flow. Utilizing neurofeedback, real-time brain activity shapes the electronic components, emphasizing the natural ebb and flow of human physiology. Rhoē invites reflection on our deep connection to sound, blending art and technology in a transformative experience.

Biography

Penelope Bekiari is a sound artist and researcher focused on the dynamic relationship between sound and brain activity. She explores how auditory feedback influences neural patterns and how brain data can optimise sound processing. She graduated from NKUA and holds a Master’s degree in Electroacoustic Composition from the University of Manchester. Her work has been featured at international conferences, including Ultima (Oslo Contemporary Music Festival), EASTN-DC (Cardiff), MANTIS (Manchester), CIME/ICEM (Montpellier), SMC (Porto), MA/IN Festival (Rome), and the Institute for Data Science (Manchester). Penelope is currently a PhD candidate at NKUA and Queen Mary University, Belfast, under the supervision of Orestis Karamanlis and Miguel Ortiz.

Concrete Dreams of Sound explores music born from and dwelling within architecture. Recorded at London’s Brutalist Barbican complex, it investigates how architecture can shape sound. Using instruments and sensors to capture vibrations in air, through walls, and underwater, the work reveals how sound materialises in relation to space. Sounds were reintroduced into these environments, creating resonances and acoustic responses unique to each location. A violin, used to activate architectural reactions, highlights the textures of materials like concrete and glass. This project imagines architecture as both a listening device and a listener, shaping a new kind of site-specific music.

Biography

Gerard Gormley is an Irish composer and sound artist whose work explores the sonic potential of spaces and architecture. Through experimental processes, he captures and replays site-specific sounds and vibrations, transforming locations into resonant carriers of music. His projects often involve recording, transplanting, and layering sounds from various places, creating dialogues between their sonic and material histories. Gormley’s work, known for its granular and micro-textural focus, has been featured at The MAC Belfast, Modern Art Oxford, Cannes Festival, Storung Festival, The Cube at Virginia Tech, Sonorities Festival, and broadcast across Irish and UK cinema and television.

Programme Notes

Biographies

Christopher Haworth

Christopher Haworth is a musicologist and practice-researcher. His creative work brings methods associated with modernist composition into dialogue with popular electronic music in ways that emphasise the surreal and absurd. Ongoing research projects include methods for using psychoacoustics in composition and spatial audio, notably auditory distortion synthesis (difference tones). His music has been released by Superpang and his research papers have been published by Computer Music Journal, Organised Sound, Leonardo Music Journal and others. In 2025, he is completing a monograph on electronic music and the history of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, forthcoming with OUP.

Erik Nyström

Erik Nyström is a composer of electroacoustic and computer music. Recurring areas of interest in his practice include spatial texture, synthetic sound, generative algorithms, improvisation and posthuman agency. Nyström’s music is performed internationally and released on empreintes DIGITALes. His writings have appeared in journals and conference proceedings including Organised Sound, EContact!, ICMC and NIME. Nyström studied electroacoustic composition with Denis Smalley at City, University of London, where he obtained a doctorate in 2013. During 2015-18 he was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at BEAST (Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre), University of Birmingham. He is currently Lecturer in Music at City, University of London.

Kajang is a city in Indonesia, specifically located in the Bulukumba Regency, South Sulawesi Province. It is home to one of the many indigenous communities of Indonesia who are preserving their traditional, simple, and environmentally-friendly way of life.

Kajang people strictly follow ancestral customs, dress in all black, and live in wooden stilt houses without modern technology. They also have deep spiritual beliefs closely tied to nature and uphold strict social and ecological rules.

Biography

Otto Sidharta is a composer of electronic music from Bandung – Indonesia, whose work explores the blending of the sounds of Indonesia and elements of traditional Indonesian music into electronic works.

His work frequently explores the relationship between sound and its environment, reflecting his long-held interest in field recordings. Sidharta has been involved in various projects that aim to highlight the cultural significance of sound in Indonesia, often recording in remote areas to capture unique acoustic ecosystems.

In addition to his compositions, Sidharta has served as an educator, sharing his knowledge of music theory, composition, and sound exploration with students. His studies abroad, particularly in Amsterdam, have enriched his musical perspective, allowing him to combine local traditions with international techniques. Sidharta has formerly served as Chairman for the Music Committee of Jakarta Art Council and the Indonesian Composers Association.

His portfolio of compositions also includes orchestral works, chamber music, and pieces that utilise traditional instruments, showcasing his versatile approach to sound.

Through his music, he emphasises cultural heritage, experimentation, and a deep appreciation for the auditory landscape.

Pressure point is a semi-improvisation/composition for electronic instruments that expresses aggressive emotion mixed with silence and space of sound, with interactive visuals linked to the sound and even the gestures of the performer.

The inspiration was to imitate the sounds and gestures of thunder and rain and the atmosphere during monsoons.

Biography

Mahakit Mahaniranon is a Thai composer-performer who plays piano and modular synthesizer. His multifaceted practice combines performance, composition, improvisation, sound of traditional Thai music and electroacoustic elements into an eclectic, individual musical expression. Searching for sound incorporating acoustic elements, synthesizer and digital processes, his works reject stylistic boundaries and seek their own identity mixing ambient, minimalism, noise, free improvisation, Thai traditional, contemporary classical music and experimental electronica.

Mahakit Mahaniranon was part of the foley team for “Krut: The Himmaphan Warriors”, available on Netflix in Thailand. In 2023 he received funding and won the Best Creative Idea Prize 2023 for a performance from the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music, Thailand. He was selected as an Artist in Residence 2023 at Elektronmusikstudion EMS, Stockholm, Sweden.

The University of the Arts Singapore (UAS), LASALLE College of the Arts has invited Mahakit as an Artist in Residence in 2024, to continue the development of his work “Twilight Phenomena” as part of the Music Research in Singapore Symposium 2024, held at LASALLE College, Singapore. Mahakit has received sponsorship opportunities from the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, Ministry of Culture, Thailand, Goethe-Institut Thailand and Arturia music company based in Grenoble, France, among others.

Tamed/Untamed is a performance piece that consists of a live improvisation over a multi-channel track. Its unique approach combines electronic pads and Mexican jaguar ocarinas, which create an immersive texture of color and rhythm, on which the fantastic Colombian gaita, an overtone wind-pipe, is subjected to live electronic processing. Tamed/Untamed explores the collision of the ethnic (acoustic) and digital (electronic) worlds, while simultaneously surveying themes like control, fear, and the paradox of the unknown.

Biography

Pepe Gavilondo is a Cuban composer, pianist, keyboard player, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, producer, music director and visual creator. His music is highly versatile, and explores diverse areas like music for dance, film and audiovisuals, chamber and symphonic New Music, experimental and improvised interdisciplinary art. Gavilondo is also an accomplished music producer and audio-visual creator, specialised in dance-art videos. His creative portfolio holds over a dozen works for film, 20 for dance and more than 25 contemporary music original pieces, some of which have been performed by famous musicians and ensembles like the CUE Orchestra and Berliner-Philharmonic horn player Sarah Willis. From 2014 to 2024 he was the main keyboard player at Latin-Grammy-Award-winning band Síntesis. He is Specialist in Classical Music at Havana´s most important contemporary arts venue, Fábrica de Arte Cubano, and director and performer at Cuba’s pioneer experimental music band, Ensemble Interactivo de La Habana, which he himself created in 2014. He has composed music for award-winning films, documentaries and short films like Mafifa (Daniela Muñoz), Abisal (Alejandro Otero), El Peso de la quietud (Memo Ojeda) and Saudade (X Alfonso and Inti Herrera). In 2023 he was in charge of transcribing, re-orchestrating and editing the symphonic scores of Latin-Grammy-Award-winning album Ancestros Sinfónico, from X Alfonso and Síntesis. Since 2017, he’s been the resident composer at Cuba’s top contemporary and neo-classical dance company, Acosta Danza, directed by world-renowned dancer and entrepreneur Carlos Acosta. In 2024, Gavilondo co-conceived a singular and eclectic arrangement of the entire score of The Nutcracker, for Carlos Acosta’s singular version, “Nutcracker in Havana”, which recently toured the UK with high success. Gavilondo was selected as a fellow in the prestigious program 1Beat, held in the USA in 2018. In 2024, Gavilondo was the recipient of the prestigious Chevening Scholarship, awarded by the British Council and the British Embassy in Havana, allowing him to start postgraduate studies in Musical Composition at University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

‘Feed three strings forward’ is a multichannel, live-improvised, performer-computer duet combining Persian traditional/classical music on the Setar and live electronics using machine listening and corpus-based concatenative synthesis. This performance brings together the traditional musical culture of Iran, and the aesthetics and technicalities of computer music. It explores idiomatic gestures and melodic/harmonic structures popular in traditional Setar music, and the performer’s live interaction with multiple neural networks controlling various synthesis and spatial parameters. This results in an active musical and spatial dialogue, with the performer-computer duo swapping leading roles, or providing accompaniment at various times.

Biography

Milad Mardakheh (b.1991) is an Iranian composer, sound-artist, programmer and researcher. With an undergraduate background in computer engineering, he acquired an MMus degree in Composition from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2017, and later a PhD in Composition from the University of Birmingham (BEAST) in 2021.

Mardakheh’s work has been featured and published in various academic journals, International conferences/symposiums as well as music festivals, radio programs and concerts, including Leonardo Journal, NIME (International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression), ICMC (International Computer Music Conference), klingt gut! KLG (International Symposium on Sonic Art and Spatial Audio), annual International BEAST (Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre) Music Festivals, Reform Radio and Royal College of Music in Stockholm (Kungl. Musikhögskolan).

In “subsume,” Bekah Simms’ sublime sound world uses samplings from an eclectic group of performers to create a dense and kaleidoscopic musical texture accompanied by visuals from artist Dan Tapper.

Biography

Composer Bekah Simms hails from St. John’s, Canada and is currently based in Glasgow. Their varied musical output has been heralded as “cacophonous, jarring, oppressive — and totally engrossing!” (CBC Music.)

Bekah’s music has been widely performed across North America and Europe including at the Gaudeamus Festival, Wien Modern, ACHT BRÜCKEN, and New Music Dublin. Bekah has been the recipient of over 40 awards, including a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2023 JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year, a 2022 Gaudeamus Award nomination, and the 2019 Barlow Prize.

Bekah is currently a Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.