TECHNO-UTOPIA is a concerto for soloist performing on piano, synthesizers and newly-developed adaptive technology instruments. It was commissioned by the Radio Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB) and BBC Radio 3. The RSB will give the world premiere in October 2026 at the Haus der Rundfunk, conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni with soloist Zubin Kanga. The BBC Philharmonic recorded it for BBC Radio 3 in July 2025.

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Instrumentation:
soloist (piano; synthesizers; adaptive instruments), large symphony orchestra, electronics​

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Programme Note

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TECHNO-UTOPIA explores human music-making in the age of algorithms and how creating, performing and listening to music constructs what it means to be human. It is also a highly personal piece, particularly the third movement which is a patchwork of hundreds of musical quotes, samples and memories from my own life – a dataset a computer could never understand, no matter how powerful it is.​​

 

My doctorate in composition was examined by composer and computer music pioneer George E. Lewis. Our final discussion was about boundaries: can AI understand music outside the bounds of its prior knowledge? What will happen to music “on the edges” in a world increasingly reliant on these technologies? This question was important as I composed this piece. Each of the three movements aims toward the same goal: to celebrate the fact that our connection with sound and music extends far beyond data, to explore how this connection can (or can’t) be explored by technology, while also demonstrating and resisting the uncanny, alien, detached gaze that algorithms cast upon human music. So TECHNO-UTOPIA contains contradictions. Everything - every movement, performer, note and sample - plays a double purpose.

 

In the first movement, "In My Image," the soloist wields sonic "commands" that progressively transform the orchestra's five distinct musical personalities into uniform, modular, interchangeable algorithmic patterns. The soloist performs the role of ruthless curator - lopping off the edges of music until it all sounds the same. This is a bleak prospect, but I wondered if perhaps when the idea is performed by a human orchestra, soloist and conductor, I might find new ideas and structures I hadn’t considered before. During this movement, the soloist also performs on a “Seaboard” - a keyboard which tracks the pressure of the pianist’s fingers. As he presses down harder, his sound transforms into an imitation orchestra, stitched together from tiny fragments of recorded sound.

 

The second movement features the "Stacco," a magnetic instrument created by the Intelligent Instruments Lab in Iceland. It captures the last sounds of the first movement, and the soloist uses it to fragment, destroy and reconstitute orchestral sounds using neural networks. This section is both human and non-human; this highly non-human instrument is controlled, physically and expressively, by the soloist manipulating it with their hands.

 

"Everything I Have Ever Heard Is Just Data," the final movement, is transcribed, reimagined and collaged from approximately 200 personal sonic memories important to me - pieces of music, field recordings, fragments of conversation. These sound memories range from music I composed for my school jazz band, folksong performed at my wedding, the sounds of builders working on my house in London, birdsong recordings I captured in the subtropical rainforests of New Zealand, the half-remembered speech of an anaesthetist, and many many more.

 

Zubin Kanga and the RSB perform this music alongside historic recordings (controlled by the soloist’s sampler), blending my own memories with those of the musicians, ensemble and audience. There is a lot of joy, excitement, humour and surprise in this movement. There is also, under the surface, an uncanniness. “Everything I Have Ever Heard Is Just Data” scans through this patchwork of sound, treating it all just the same and without context. In a way, I am imitating the computer’s ears, rather than the other way round.

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In addition to piano and synthesizers, the soloist also performs on the newly-invented instrument "Stacco". This instrument, controlled by manipulating magnets, responds directly to the orchestra on stage, creating new timbres and approaches to sound through adaptive sonic technology. I developed and adapted this technology for TECHNO-UTOPIA with Nicola Privato and Victor Shepardson in a residency at the Intelligent Instruments Lab in Iceland.