Zubin Kanga: Ghost in the Machine + After Dark

The trailblazing pianist, composer and technologist performs a world premiere by AI pioneer George Lewis and works by Nwando Ebizie, Alex Paxton and Ben Nobuto. Pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga performs groundbreaking new music from his Cyborg Soloists project that fuses classical virtuosity with cutting-edge technologies, combining the piano with hybrid instruments, digital avatars, synthesisers, body sensors and experimental AI. The centrepiece is a monumental new work by visionary composer George Lewis, who has been combining interactive AI systems and live musicians for over 45 years. Blombos Playground is a new milestone in his decades of human-computer innovation, combining Kanga’s live keyboardist with two AI improvising systems, Voyager and Somax. Voyager is Lewis’ iconic interactive software system which he has been continuously developing over four decades. It responds to the live performer like a natural improvisor with its own unique personality. Somax, a machine-learning-based system developed at IRCAM in Paris, has been trained on Kanga’s improvisations to become a kind of improvising AI doppelgänger. In Blombos Playground, the two systems are combined as SoVo, a new hybrid AI improvising system, performing and improvising with Kanga on three virtual keyboard instruments swirling across multiple speakers, in a breathtaking dialogue between real and virtual creativity. Nwando Ebizie’s I Will Fix Myself (Just Circles) explores the influence of Chop