Zubin Kanga

Pianist composer and technologist Zubin Kanga performs new works at the cutting edge of new music technologies, featuring the world premiere of ‘Sataniq Paniq // Satanipanicon’ by Canadian composer Nicole Lizée, which explores the 1980s moral panic around role-playing games, horror films and heavy metal, alongside new works by Jasmin Kent Rodgman, Dai Fujikura and Mathis Saunier.

This concert features the world premiere of Nicole Lizée’s Sataniq Paniq // Satanipanicon, which explores the 1980s North American ‘satanic panic’ and the perception of satanic influences and secret messages in heavy metal, horror films, and board and role-playing games (including Dungeons and Dragons). Drawing on decades of experience with glitching and looping of films, Lizée has created a series of short documentary and filmic scenes that recreate and parody the media storm of the era. These films extend beyond the screen, into the performance and audience, centring this set of virtuosic studies for piano, interactive technologies, custom props and multimedia.

Jasmin Kent Rodgman’s ORGANS asks us what it takes to maintain empathy in a digital age where conflict and violence are so readily exposed and heavily normalised, in a work intertwining piano and synthesiser with live-controlled visuals.

Dai Fujikura’s Nagisa (Water’s Edge) merges the soundworld of his colourful orchestration and the influence of synth-based jazz and electro-pop, conjuring waves of sound across the piano and synthesiser, in a flowing duet between the hands.

And Mathis Saunier’s NOXIA_VOLIUM conjures a hyper-real landscape exploring language, science, and synthetic perception in a vibrant sci-fi play of artificial voices, flashing lights and rippling keyboards.

All the works in this programme were commissioned by Zubin Kanga as part of Cyborg Soloists, supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London.

Price: £22.50