Zubin Kanga: Ghost in the Machine + After Dark

ZUBIN KANGA at Southbank Centre

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.

All the music was commissioned or created as part of Cyborg Soloists, supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London. SoVo was created in 2025 by Marco Fiorini and Gérard Assayag at IRCAM, and George Lewis and Damon Holzborn at Columbia University.

The ticket price includes a £2 venue restoration levy.