These three events are a fun and rhythmical introduction to new music for all ages. Toy pianist Isabel Ettenauer and composer Rachel Leach put the ‘play' back into playing the piano (Toy Play Programme SPNM). Percussionists Richard Benjafield and Chris Brannick show that music can be made with anything, from bare hands to glasses of water. This family-friendly event will appeal to anyone with a pulse: you've got rhythm, they've got music, who could ask for anything more? The line-up culminates in a performance featuring a dazzling display of virtuosic tabla and jazz piano from tabla phenomenon Kuljit Bhamra and Mercury Award-nominated jazz pianist Zoe Rahman.
From the Pet Shop Boys to Mike Leigh, King's Cross has been a draw to artists. In the first of three events exploring the area, sound artist and environmental educator Tony Whitehead will take you on a sound walk, revealing the character and sound poetry of local life. Soprano Loré Lixenberg (who's played leading roles in operas by Maxwell Davies and Birtwistle and Jerry Springer, the Opera) performs a programme including new pieces setting texts from the King's Cross Voices oral history project. We end with new short films featuring live music, using archive and recent footage of King's Cross.
Toy Play
Choose your seat on arrival.
Date: Thursday 2 October
Time: 14:15
Venue: Hall Two
Please note that online booking closes 90 minutes prior to the start of the performance.
Designed for children and the young at heart aged 2+. Including new pieces for ‘baby' grand and opportunities for you to participate. (Pre-school children and their carers)
Isabel Ettenauer, toy pianos Rachel Leach, composer
Three Strange Angels
Choose your seat on arrival.
Date: Thursday 2 October
Time: 16:00
Venue: Hall Two
Please note that online booking closes 90 minutes prior to the start of the performance.
Family-friendly programme to include Steve Reich's Clapping Music and Stephen Montague's tongue-in-cheek Philup Glass - A Lullaby for Wine Glasses, as well as new work by Jamie Telford.
Richard Benjafield, percussion Chris Brannick, percussion
Kuljit Bhamra & Zoe Rahman
Choose your seat on arrival.
Date: Thursday 2 October
Time: 17:15
Venue: Hall Two
Please note that online booking closes 90 minutes prior to the start of the performance.
Stylish and virtuosic combination of tabla and jazz piano by two of the UK's leading players.
King's Cross Sound Walk
Choose your seat on arrival.
Date: Sunday 5 October
Time: 14:45
Venue: Hall Two
Please note that online booking closes 90 minutes prior to the start of the performance.
Listen afresh, from the unexpected calm of Battlebridge Basin and Regent's Canal, to the unmistakeable presence of King's Cross and St Pancras stations.
Tony Whitehead sonic artist and Matthew Sansom composer
Songs of King's Cross
Choose your seat on arrival.
Date: Sunday 5 October
Time: 16:00
Venue: Hall Two
Please note that online booking closes 90 minutes prior to the start of the performance.
Loré Lixenberg, soprano
Credit Crunch: An experimental piece in which price information for one year of the FTSE100 index dating from the beginning of the credit crunch is translated into notes that form the melodies of the mezzo-soprano voice part. This is then accompanied by a processed audio part of the same FTSE information that uses harmonic filters and granular delays.
King's Cross in sound and on film
Date: Sunday 5 October
Time: 17:15
Venue: Hall Two
Please note that online booking closes 90 minutes prior to the start of the performance.
Featuring Steve Reich's action-packed 'City-Life' performed with new film of London by the 18-piece Contemporary Music Group from Trinity College of Music, alongside new pieces about King's Cross devised for this event by four dynamic young film-makers and composers: Tian Tian Zhu & Ann Xiao and Mark Atkinson & Leslie Deere.
