This event is part of Friday Lates at The National Gallery.
Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees is a new long-form piece of music by Benjamin Tassie, commissioned as part of pianist Zubin Kanga’s UKRI-funded research project ‘Cyborg Soloists’. It uses the latest studio and keyboard technologies (including the 4D expressive ROLI Seaboard Rise 2 keyboard) to augment the sound and capabilities of some of the world’s most significant historical organs.
To make Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees, Tassie visited and recorded historical organs from across the UK and Europe, including the Van Straten Organ, a reconstruction of a late-Medieval Dutch organ (dating from 1479) in Amsterdam, period instruments at St Cecelia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh, and the Wingfield Organ, a reconstructed English Tudor organ.
Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees is a monolithic, 70-minute tour de force, in which the audience is invited to immerse themselves in this sonically enveloping drone-composition. Performed by Kanga in the round using three different keyboards to trigger these organ sounds virtually, this piece of shifting and transforming tones creates a rich and enveloping sensory experience.
