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Total Immersion: Continents, Computers and Electric Dreams

BBC SO Total Immersion: Symphonic Electronics

Wavy white lines across spanning the length of the image, suggestive of sound waves. In the centre of the image is the outline of a quaver. Around it are blue circular swirls.

Continents, computers and electric dreams: Tristan Murail’s non-electronic orchestral classic Gondwana charts a course to new worlds with electronics sound from Steven Daverson and Misato Mochizuki. 

Musical instruments probe the inner game of a film by Tarkovsky, plumbing memories and dreams in the UK premiere of Steven Daverson’s BBC co-commission. A computer-created bird erupts into the middle of a symphony orchestra in Misato Mochizuki’s work exploring the thread between brains, intrusions and interactions. And Tristan Murail invokes Indian myths and electronic inspiration to rediscover – in ravishing orchestral sound – a whole continent that has been lost.

Sounds impossible? Well, that’s what this Total Immersion day is about. Murail’s 1980 classic Gondwana helped define a new method of creating sound, and a compelling new way of listening to it. Now, Ilan Volkov, the BBC SO, our composers and a team of virtuoso sound engineers follow his trail into that vast new world, and see where it’s taken us. You might be surprised…

This performance will finish at approximately 4:30pm, with no interval

Co-produced by the Barbican and BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Barbican Hall