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Wigmore Hall
20 November 2025
THE ARTIST IS NOT PRESENT
Wigmore Hall
£40/£37/£33/£27/£18
BOOK TICKETS
7.30pm
Jennifer Walshe
New Work (2025)
(world premiere)(LCMF/Wigmore Hall co-commission)
Clarence Barlow
Im Januar Am Nil (1981-84)
Hanne Darboven
Opus 17a (1984)
(world premiere of new version for drum kit)
Conlon Nancarrow
Studies for Player Piano (1948-1970)
Nos 3a, 12, 20, 25 and 36
W.A. Mozart (attrib.) / C.P.E. Bach
Selection of 18th-century Musikalisches Wùrfelspiele (Musical Dice-Games)
Artists:
Explore Ensemble
Jennifer Walshe voice
George Barton drum kit
Dominic Murcott player piano
The London Contemporary Music Festival returns to the Wigmore Hall with a programme that charts the way composers have engaged with AI-adjacent ideas over the centuries. Moving from the age of Mozart to the modern day, we show how startling, amusing and even moving music can be when composers reject the ego and embrace the algorithmic.
Explore Ensemble and percussionist George Barton will showcase neglected figures Clarence Barlow and Hanne Darboven; composer Dominic Murcott will present several works for player piano from the great Conlon Nancarrow (on a replica of Nancarrow's own player piano); Jennifer Walshe will return with a new commission delving into the musical history and future of computational thinking and artificial intelligence.
And there will be an extremely rare outing of a selection of Musikalisches Wùrfelspiele (Musical Dice-Games) – works attributed to or by W.A Mozart and C.P.E. Bach et al. – early examples of algorithmic composition that took the Enlightenment by storm.