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Cyborg pianist: Transforming classical music with AI and brain data

Using technologies such as MiMu motion detection gloves, brainwave sensors and artificial intelligence, Kanga hopes to create a new repertoire for the classical piano and bring it into the 21st century. ‘We now have this capability of becoming these cyborg musicians’, he says, ‘and generate a new way of making music using these new technologies.

Cyborg Pianist

It’s not uncommon these days for new releases to be saddled with adjectives like ground-breaking or cutting-edge. But from time to time, as on this debut NMC solo disc by Australian pianist and composer Zubin Kanga, those adjectives are warranted. Cyborg Pianist...is of a new wave of experimentalism, very much modern British in character, influenced by the likes of Jennifer Walshe and Matthew Shlomowitz and having little to do with traditional musical Britishness.

Zubin Kanga - the 'cyborg pianist'

“In what I'm doing it's very much more about showcasing the technology and the idea that I really am extending the body, extending the instrument. I think showing that to the audience is actually more interesting - to be able to see what's happening, rather than things being hidden behind a laptop.”

In Cyborg Soloist Zubin Kanga’s MiMU-Gloved Hands, Technology and Virtuosity Collide

Many instrument builders and music technologists have explored ways of expanding the capabilities of the piano, but... no repertoire was created. Without composers writing for new technology, it will not survive. By collaborating with many composers of our time, Kanga is doing everything possible to create exciting repertoire for himself, and a lasting legacy for his research.

Here Zubin Kanga has commissioned six composers to create a ‘cyborg sonic identity’ for the piano, through pieces that combine it with electronics and interactive media. Initially I was sceptical – composers should assert their humanity against artistic AI, rather than embracing it. But Kanga’s project offers energetic, often ironic music that contests my reservations.

This Classical Life with Jess Gillam

“And all these works of the canon are living things that need to be re-interpreted and re-examined all the time, that’s what keeps them alive.”

A lot happens on Machine Dreams, but the consistent thread is Kanga’s fearless touch, which reliably manages to locate the emotive wellspring hidden within the machines.

Machine Dreams (Zubin Kanga)

A futuristic soundtrack in want of an imaginary Ridley Scott film illuminated by moments of euphoria, Zubin Kanga’s Machine Dreams is an immediately disconcerting listen, but one that rewards repeated hearings... it’s a snapshot of a musical moment in accelerated flux driven by the new, still expanding horizons of AI in which tradition is breathlessly attempting to keep pace with technology.

Zubin Kanga: Machine Dreams

Most pertinently, Kanga provides a rare opportunity for a diverse range of composers to test their abilities and see if they can make these tools exciting, which is an added bonus to the purely sonic realm of this album. By exploring these technologies in the hands of talented composers, we can gain a better understanding of what they have to offer. Hopefully, Kanga's Cyborg Soloists project will inspire more experimentation and creativity with these tools, but, for now, we can simply enjoy the music of Machine Dreams without worrying too much about what the machines themselves are dreaming of.

Zubin Kanga: Machine Dreams

Machine Dreams is Kanga’s most comprehensive work to date... In a sense, it’s a showcase of all the ways in which contemporary technology can exist in a symbiotic relationship with art, from physical interfaces like MiMU sensor gloves to, yes, AI-generated sound sequences. But... it’s their inherent humanity that renders them successful... While the music could not have been realised without these specific technologies, it’s a spark of the intangible, of human creativity, that brings it to life. As Holly Herndon recently remarked on Twitter, truly innovative art based on AI will not be found in repetition and echoes of past works but in “approaches we don’t have words for yet”. The music of Zubin Kanga has been heading there for a while.

When Music Talks

For several years now, Kanga has been developing projects such as Cyborg Pianist that investigate the way live musicians interact with technology, creating music that draws on the new approaches he’s discovered working as a postdoc researcher based IRCAM in Paris... If that sounds a tad dry and academic, don’t be fooled. Anyone who has seen his work can attest to influences from pop culture and stand-up comedy to absurdist theatre and conceptual visual art. A Zubin Kanga performance invariably comes with a sense of playfulness and theatricality...

Watching the performances leaves you with the impression that you are the AI, trying to compute an endless stream of data and taking days to piece together what it all means. The elements laid bare in the first half found focus during the UK premiere of Whatever Weighs You Down in collaboration with Neil Luck. Poetry, keys, multi-monitor video recordings (featuring Chisato Minamimura) and cyber-soloist kit worked together in a fantastic tour-de-force which filled the meaning of the term ‘multi modal’ to its very brim... I walked away from the two-part performance inspired...

Many of the pieces created as part of Cyborg Soloists don’t just integrate new technologies – they make them a visible part of the performance. ‘A lot of them are about the effect on the body, and also about the audience’s empathetic way of looking at what’s happening. In a lot of traditional electroacoustic music, often there’s someone behind the laptop and instrumentalist, and there might be something very sophisticated happening, but it’s very hard for the audience to gauge what that is – it’s hidden. It’s all about the end result and not about the process... A lot of these devices are about bringing the audience into the process – about making the process of controlling the electronics quite theatrical...

Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at November Music, Netherlands

I was struck by Zubin Kanga’s performance three years ago at this festival so was curious about his appearance this year with Answer Machine Tape, 1987 by Philip Venables... an engaging work, this was all in all another impressive set.

Zubin Kanga Cyborg Soloists | REVIEW | Live performance meets cyborg intervention

depth of imagination in Kanga’s collaboration... From the moment of entering OTO one could feel Kanga’s pride and excitement radiate into the room, and upon leaving I understood his reason. The​show convinced me that strategic arts funding can kindle communities, new media and opportunities for performers to recontextualise their talent, with artists like Zubin Kanga putting co-creators at the heart of their work. Immersive, intense and excitingly novel, Kanga’s art-form inspired curiosity and gave me faith in the future of performance capability.

Meet the composers using AI to create music

There was so much more I could do [once I started experimenting with technology], as a solo performer on stage. Once you have visual elements you can do all sorts of things. I’ve performed works which deal with film history, others that have used animated visuals or live visuals, and I’ve worked with stop-motion animation. Electronics also help with the theatre of the performance. Once you attach sensors to yourself, you can control things live on stage, and the audience can see the relationship between sound and what I’m doing.

When Technology Makes Music More Accessible

Creating music that incorporates multisensory experience is just one of the areas Cyborg Soloists explores. The project, supported by the government-funded U.K. Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship, also involves new types of visual interactions, including virtual reality, the creation of new digital instruments and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The next frontier for Kanga, he said, is finding a way to translate brain activity from electroencephalogram caps into sound.

London Sinfonietta review — a riotous trip to Catalonia with the music of Roberto Gerhard

But it was impossible not to be gripped and fascinated by Zubin Kanga’s Steel on Bone, featuring the adventurous composer-pianist all wired up with electronics, poking around in his piano’s innards wearing expensive multi-sensor gloves that transfer hand movements into sound. Henry Cowell, the pioneering American piano basher famous for his cluster chords played with the forearms, would surely have loved the bravura and madness of Steel on Bone. I know I did.

Electric Performance

For Kanga, electronics are clearly not an addition, but a fundamental part of working with his instrument, and the physicality of his performance a keystone rather than an afterthought.... It is because of Kanga’s assuredness not just as a pianist but as a performer of sound and action that this programme worked so well as a whole.

Zubin Kanga: Silver Screens

It would be difficult to imagine a more skilful advocate, patron and practitioner of this repertoire than Kanga – from the frenetic flailing of Rose’s contraption to the neo-Gnostic delicacy of McLaughlin’s metastable assemblage, he is always in complete, charming command of the performance situation – a debonair cyborg emcee.

Piano Ex Machina (Zubin Kanga)

Kanga’s Piano Ex Machina is a rewarding experience, rich in possibility, infused with curiosity and playfulness, and not afraid to explore conceptual and expressive horizons well beyond the boundaries of a traditional piano recital.

Kanga’s Piano Ex Machina is a rewarding experience, rich in possibility, infused with curiosity and playfulness, and not afraid to explore conceptual and expressive horizons well beyond the boundaries of a traditional piano recital.

Piano Ex Machina (Zubin Kanga)

Kanga’s Piano Ex Machina is a rewarding experience, rich in possibility, infused with curiosity and playfulness, and not afraid to explore conceptual and expressive horizons well beyond the boundaries of a traditional piano recital.

Cyborg Pianist (Zubin Kanga)

Zubin Kanga lifted his hands off the piano and over his shoulders, slow-motion, Matrix-style, the fading resonance of the instrument twisting and morphing through electronics... Cyborg Pianist was slick and incredibly fun. Kanga is a dynamic and versatile pianist, bringing both virtuosity and a sense of play to his performances, deftly juggling the technical and dramatic requirements of the diverse works.

Melbourne Festival review: Zubin Kanga captivates with blaze of creative brilliance

As well, he showed a dedication to electronics, which featured in every score, two of them live with the assistance of Benjamin Carey... Kanga's interpretation [of John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes] was engrossing, the work's mutable rhythmic steadiness and continuous juxtaposition of pointillism with colour-washes accomplished splendidly, the performance reaching a serenely illuminating climax across the last two sonatas, where the gentle clangour generated by this gifted pianist invested the festival with a blaze of retrospective creative brilliance.

Cyborg Pianist

Cyborg Pianist is an extraordinary sound adventure... a seamless integration of technology and brilliant musicianship.

Arcko live in concert

While his palpable expertise is captivating from the beginning, Kanga’s performance becomes utterly hypnotic at the astonishing reveal of Gyger’s magic trick – the prepared piano….. Kanga's sublime combination of genuine emotion and prodigious skill is showcased

Review: Dark Twin (Zubin Kanga)

An exciting program of new works that were conceptually united by the idea of extension and expansion through various forms of electronically generated mirroring. Kanga is an equally exciting pianist, effortlessly virtuosic and in complete command of this (quite literally) electrifying modern repertoire.

Review: Dark Twin (Zubin Kanga)

“An exciting program of new works that were conceptually united by the idea of extension and expansion through various forms of electronically generated mirroring. Kanga is an equally exciting pianist, effortlessly virtuosic and in complete command of this (quite literally) electrifying modern repertoire.”

Seven composers, from emerging to venerable, each with a unique voice

virtuosic energy and devotion to artistic purpose, [Kanga's] project curatorship showing intelligent discernment

Piano: Inside/Out – Zubin Kanga @ Kings Place, London

...Zubin Kanga is clearly a pianist that revels in repertoire that seeks to exploit the inside and the outside of an instrument that continues to offer composers a wealth of sonic potential; with Kanga championing such repertoire one hopes more writing for the instrument will contemplate what the instrument offers beyond the 88 keys.

CD review of Chiaroscuro

Sheldon and Kanga acquit themselves wonderfully, displaying Sheldon’s technical assuredness and Kanga’s artistry at projecting immensely complex music without ever upstaging or drowning out the voice.