Zubin Kanga piano / keyboards / live electronics / live video

Cyborg Études Artistic Team:
Alex Ho composer
Gillian Tan video design
Elayce Ismail dramaturgy / text

Alex Ho (UK, 1993)
Cyborg Études (2024) 20’ World Premiere

Claudia Molitor (Germany/UK, 1974)
In den Träumen (2023) 33’ World Premiere

Alex Paxton (UK, 1990)
Car-Pig (2022) 9’

Pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga performs three new works that fuse the piano with keyboards, sensors and interactive video, exploring dreamlike states, split identities and frenzied virtuosity.

Alex Ho‘s Cyborg Études combines piano and live gesture-controlled electronics with interactive visual design and text created by Gillian Tan and Elayce Ismail. Across five continuous movements, the cycle explores the tension between virtuosity and vulnerability and what it means to collapse their sharp edges together. It draws inspiration from W. E. B. Du Bois’ articulation of ‘double consciousness‘, the toil of racialised experience and the struggle to find new beginnings.

Claudia Molitor’s In den Träumen draws on her own poem of the same name with the repeated refrain ‘doch weil Du einfach nicht hier bist dann bleibt das in den Träumen’ (‘but as you’re just not here then it stays in my dreams’). It combines the piano, ranging from mesmeric textures to scintillating graphic-scored passages, with electronics that draw on her field-recording and sound-sculpting work. Lastly, Alex Paxton injects manic energy into Car-Pig, using sampler keyboards to layer dozens of sounds, including choirs, theremins, tennis balls and animal noises.

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