Venue: Kings Place (Hall Two), London

Terry Riley’s contribution to the string quartet canon is celebrated with a performance of his seminal work, Cadenza on the Night Plain, and a premiere of a new arrangement of Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band (the B-side of Riley’s much-loved 1969 album A Rainbow in Curved Air). Alongside this, their interpretation of 70 Chords by Terry by one of Riley’s fellow travellers, Pauline Oliveros, whose approach to listening and improvisation revealed radical new ways of communal music-making.

Ligeti Quartet brings the now-vintage sound world of Steve Reich’s iconic Different Trains into the present day via the Soundscape system at Kings Place.

Alongside this poignant work the Quartet presents tracks from their new album Nuc, a collaboration with award-winning composer Anna Meredith. In addition to strings, Nuc features the sounds of synths, drum machines, birdsong, an MRI scanner, brass and hums, proving the durability of the string quartet in the twenty-first century.

What does the brain sound like? Neuroscientist and composer Cliff Kerr explores what happens when performers become composers by translating their brain activity in real time into musical scores. Leveraging recent advances in non-invasive EEG hardware and time series analysis methods information is extracted from the brain.

How does limiting our senses change how we experience music? The Ligeti Quartet examine ‘sense’ in the first instalment of a series of concerts exploring music and the brain.

Be immersed in pitch darkness for an intense perceptual experience with music by Georg Friedrich Haas. Explore deeply personal dialogues between composer/singer/writer/TV personality Kerry Andrew and her experiences of hearing in the world premiere of tInNiTuS sOnGs. To see is as much as to hear in music by Helmut Lachenmann where the string quartet is reduced to raw materials of wood, metal, string, and hair.

We're thrilled that Kerry Andrew will be joining us in the performance of tInNiTuS sOnGs for this concert.

Violinist Jyotsna Srikanth explores time in South Indian music. The first half of this concert, with mridangam and ghatam percussion, comprises a whirlwind historical sketch of great composers from the 15th to the 20th century in several different rhythmic cycles. In the second half Srikanth presents the UK premiere of her own Raga Seasons violin concerto with the Ligeti Quartet: six movements depicting the six seasons of the Hindu calendar.

This concert showcases the expansion of the string quartet repertoire to include music from beyond the Western classical tradition. Christian Mason’s Tuvan Songbook is part of a series of Songbooks to be commissioned by the Ligeti Quartet, each based on a tradition of overtone singing from around the world. ‘Melodicles’ is a musical concept invented by American composer Lou Harrison, whose centenary is celebrated in 2017. His String Quartet Set borrows from medieval European and Eastern influences.