Zubin Kanga’s ongoing Cyborg Soloists project has seen the commissioning, performing and recording of a huge number of UK based and international composers. Laura Bowler and Zubin Kanga’s recent collaboration as part of this project, “SHOWtiME”, excavated the inner psychology of the performer in a social media driven landscape, utilising MIMU glove technology, live video and live processing. Following the success of this project, Laura and Zubin would like to build on this partnership alongside Laura’s desire to further collaborate with London Sinfonietta following their ground breaking project, Houses Slide.

EXCESS is exactly that. A piano/keyboards concerto incorporating several technological tools explored across Zubin’s commissioning and research project, bringing them together in a single work; a metaphor for humanity’s insatiability and our excess consumption of resources. The soloists role would exist across three stations; Piano, Synth and Toy Piano. Each station embodies a particular form of excess, both technologically and sociologically. The work would include MIMU gloves alongside several other extensions of the soloist, deliberately turning the human body into a tool feeding into the technology. The work will also incorporate a video aspect, likely including live and pre-recorded video. Text will be drawn from several sources, including the writer of Dark Ecology, Timothy Morton. The work is, from one perspective, the musical embodiment of capitalism , and from another, it will be a direct challenge of the insatiable greed that fuels a capitalist mind set. The ensemble will act as a further extension of the soloist, expanding the reach of the soloist far beyond their own body and it’s technological adornments. The ensemble themselves will be equipped with props and toy instruments alongside their instrument.

EXCESS will be joyous, violent and grotesque all in a single breath.

The work will be commissioned by Cyborg Soloists and we are looking for a co-commissioning partner and producer.