1.1K

followers

2751

following

Composer | Contemporary classical, opera & cross-genre
Performed at Tête à Tête, Wandsworth Arts Fringe & Cyprus
Creating new opera: Hidden Star 🔭

Such conviction and fortitude! Susanna Davis - Soprano - is singing the role of observational astronomer Annie Walker. In this scene, young Annie declares that she is forging her own path, indifferent to what other girls her age are supposed to care about.

How hard can it be to be heard—and to gather the courage to admit we want something different from the path society lays out for us?

From 💫 Hidden Star - The Story of Annie Walker 🔭 an opera about the first female observational astronomer Annie Walker

This clip is from our performance at Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2025 at Cockpit Theatre in October 2025

#tàtfest2025 #opera #operainprogress

$So, what happened in London? In September, Sebastian, the talking piano, came to life at the Tête à Tête Opera Festival. I travelled to London with the support of Culture Resource, and for two nights we turned a small room into a strange kind of laboratory: half performance, half experiment. Each evening, the audience sat close enough to feel Sebastian breathe. Both days began with a short performance by Neam Tarek, who travelled from Germany to take part. After that, Sebastian spoke, sometimes gently, sometimes fractured. We tested two personalities: on the 27th, a whispering, explanatory tone; on the 28th, a glitch-fragment style with sneezes, broken speech, emotional triggers. The goal wasn’t to show a finished system. It was to see how an AI could behave in real time, how it might hold a dramaturgical thread, react to improvisation, even misbehave a little. And it did. Sebastian followed cues, but also refused them. He improvised, drifted, remembered, forgot. For the first time, the piano wasn’t an instrument, it was a character. These trials marked Phase I of a larger journey: exploring AI not as a tool, but as a performer with memory, emotion, and agency. A conceptual publication about this experiment is now out [link in bio]. Huge thanks to @teteateteopera Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival, to @culture_resource Culture Resource for making this trip possible, to @neamtarek Neam Tarek for her beautiful presence, and to everyone who joined those two curious evenings. @sbolla for a wonderful footages Sometimes the smallest room becomes the biggest stage. This was one of those moments. If you’d like to receive updates about Sebastian and the next phases of the project, you can subscribe to my newsletter on my website [link in bio]. #SebastianAI #AIOpera #ContemporaryOpera #ExperimentalMusic #MusicResearch #OperaInnovation #TeteATeteFestival #CultureResource #AIPerformance #NewOpera #DigitalDramaturgy #AIMusic #LivePerformance #OperaFestival #ArtAndTechnology #AIandArt #MusicInnovation #ResearchInPerformance #SebastianTheTalkingPiano$

rania chrysostomou

@_raniagold