Press room

Just Announced for 2024

Erland Cooper: Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence 

Ground-breaking Scottish composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Erland Cooper returns to the Barbican’s music programme in 2024, sharing his buried album, unearthed, and performed live for the first time, exactly as it sounds from the earth.

In May 2021, Cooper planted the only existing copy of the master tape of his first classical album in Orkney, Scotland, deleting all digital files and leaving only a treasure hunt of clues for fans and his record label alike to search for it.

Alongside very special guests, in this one-off performance Cooper shall both reveal and play back the retrieved tape from the soil, and with some exceptional musicians, perform the album exactly as it sounds from the earth.

Erland Cooper said about Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence: “The material on the tape may have eroded completely, disintegrated or created drops of silence or the peaty soil may have preserved it perfectly well. It may or may not have got better with age. Any alterations to the sound and music, when it comes out of the earth, will be reincorporated into the pages of a new score and live performance. This is an act of patience, a collaboration with time and the natural world.”

Erland Cooper returns to the Barbican following his Live from the Barbican appearance alongside soloists from the London Contemporary Orchestra + Mary Anne Hobbs in autumn 2020.

Produced by the Barbican 
On sale to Barbican patrons and members on Wed 25 May 2022 

On general sale on Fri 27 May 2022
Find out more

Rescheduled Date for 2023 Announced

Novo Amor

Welsh multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer and sound designer Novo Amor will make his Barbican debut in spring 2023. Performing with his full band, he will present material from his 2018 debut album Birthplace, 2020 album Cannot Be, Whatsoever (AllPoints) as well as music from his earlier catalogue.

Novo Amor is Ali Lacey. He lives in Cardiff, in a house that’s part-home, part-studio, a place where the distant chatter of a party across the street, Bonfire Night fireworks and the seagulls that congregate on the building site next door bleed into his recordings.

He began Novo Amor as a project of sorts – an act of defiance in the wake of a break-up, but along the way, quite unexpectedly, he found something rich and rewarding. Years ago, a summer spent by an evergreen-surrounded lake in upstate New York supplied both the impetus and imagery that he would use to craft his debut album Birthplace.

As he prepared to release Cannot Be, Whatsoever, Lacey contemplated a past sound tracked by songs of quiet hope and longing. “I can still see the lake upstate when I picture ‘Birthplace’, the songs sheltered by this place I’ve romanticised that doesn’t actually exist anymore. These new songs feel immediate and noisy in comparison, almost optimistic. If ‘Birthplace’ is the countryside, then ‘Cannot Be, Whatsoever’ is the city.”   

Produced by the Barbican in association with Communion

Find out more