For Barbican's ‘Arvo Pärt at 90’ celebrations, 12 Ensemble pay homage to the 20th century titan's iconic compositions presenting a collection of his works alongside music by pioneering electronic artists and contemporary classical composers.
Arvo Pärt Fratres – Fur Alina – Pari Intervallo – Fur Lennart im memoriam – Mein Weg – Spiegel im Spiegel
Koreless New work and Agor reimagined
Floating Points Requiem for CS70 and strings
Sasha Scott Night Owl
Oliver Coates One Without
Jasmine Morris New work
performed by 12 Ensemble and special guests GBSR Duo
Estonian composer Arvo Pärt's creative output has significantly changed the way we understand the nature of music today. In the early stages of his career Pärt worked as a sound engineer at the Estonian Radio alongside composing. During those years Pärt became one of the leading figures in the Soviet avant-garde with his modernist compositions. Nevertheless, this style didn't interest him for very long – many of his early compositions can be viewed rather as brilliant experiments or testing the boundaries. Searching for his own musical language, in 1976, he created tintinnabuli.
Tintinnabuli music (from tintinnabulum – Latin for ’little bell’) can be defined as a distinct technique, which unites melody and triad into one, inseparable ensemble. Through this duality of voices Pärt has given a new meaning to the horizontal and vertical axis of music, and broadened our perception of tonal and modal music in its widest sense. There is no compositional school that follows Pärt, nor does he teach, nevertheless, a large part of the contemporary music has been influenced by his compositions.
Oliver Coates is a cellist, a composer for film and an electronic music producer. His music explores improvisation, dark ambient music, and intimate melodic cello with distortion and tape modulation. His most recent solo record is Throb, shiver, arrow of time (2024) released on RVNG.
One Without is originally from his critically acclaimed soundtrack to Charlotte Wells film Aftersun.
"Reflecting the “the vivid glow of memory”— One Without is built around a repeating figure, overlapping with shimmering reverb trails and little else, it’s spare but flickers with warmth and light. Echoing and repeating for a little over four minutes, it feels like a meditation on constancy and loss, highlighting what stays the same and what subtly changes as memories flit through your head, again and again."
– Pitchfork
Sasha Scott is a composer, producer and violinist who uses both instrumental and electronic writing to create her unique sonic worlds. ‘A chaotic sequence of electrical impulses, exploding in all directions, seemingly dark while gazing towards the light’ - MagazineSixty
In May 2025, 12 Ensemble premiered her work Night Owl for strings and electronics at the Norwich and Norfolk Festival, commissioned by the RPS Composers with support from The Marchus Trust.
'My love for sound design grew from experimenting late at night – recording myself playing the violin, sampling those sounds, and discovering new metallic textures. Night Owl is inspired by that process and shaped by a nocturnal energy: the sense of shadows shifting, and the feeling of awakening from slumber and suddenly bursting into motion. I wanted the sound world to glow like neon lights cutting through the dark – like the blur of London at night, with strobe lights, flashes of noise, and a sense of freedom. It’s about getting lost in sound, and maybe finding something unexpected there too.'
Koreless is the moniker of Welsh artist, producer, composer and performer Lewis Roberts. Emerging from the vibrant electronic music scene of the 2010’s, Koreless released acclaimed EPs Yugen and TT/Love on London record label Young and performed his standout solo live show with a/v director Emmanuel Biard around the world.
In recent times Roberts has worked as a producer / writer for some of the world’s most in demand artists, notably with FKA Twigs.
Returning to his artist project in 2021 with remixes for Caribou and Perfume Genius, along with his first new solo material in five years, Koreless released his long-awaited debut album, Agor.
12 Ensemble perform a new work by Koreless and a track from Agor, in new arrangements by Ananda Chatterjee.
Jasmine Morris is a British composer based in upstate New York. Her compositional approach integrates instrumental writing with field recordings and the sampling of found sounds. Through her work, she aims to push musical boundaries through signal processing and electronic experimentation. She has been awarded multiple residencies and workshops (Venice Biennale, LSO Soundhub, Jack Quartet Studio, Britten-Pears Young Artist, Dartington Music Festival, Luxembourg Composition Fellow) and prizes (BBC Young Composer of the Year). Her work has premiered at the Barbican, Aldeburgh Music Festival and King's Place. In 2020, Jasmine collaborated with musician Per Runberg on the album Astrophilia, released by the label Nonclassical. She is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts at Cornell University.
Jasmine is writing a new work for strings and electronics, commissioned by the Barbican for this concert.
"The best musical mavericks never sit still for long. They mutate and morph into new shapes, refusing to be boxed in. Floating Points – aka Sam Shepherd – has so many guises that it’s not easy to pin him down. There’s the composer whose 2015 debut album Elaenia was met with rave reviews – including being named Pitchfork’s Best New Music and Resident Advisor’s Album of the Year – and took him from dancefloors to festival stages worldwide. The curator whose record labels have brought soulful new sounds into the club and, on his esteemed imprint Melodies International, reinstated old ones. The classicist, the disco guy that makes machine music, the digger always searching for untapped gems to rerelease. And then there’s DJ whose liberal approach to genre saw him once drop a 20-minute instrumental by spiritual saxophonist Pharoah Sanders in Berghain." - Ninja Tune
12 Ensemble perform Requiem for CS70 and strings from Shepherd's 2019 album Crush, in a new arrangement by Eloisa-Fleur Thom.
Known for their fearless, intense and boundary-crossing performances, GBSR's work ranges from the twentieth-century modernism of Stockhausen and Ustvolskaya to music by Brian Eno and Aphex Twin; from the exquisite delicacy of composers like Morton Feldman, Eva-Maria Houben and Barbara Monk Feldman to the experimental and cross-genre work of Oliver Leith and CHAINES.
GBSR were the winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society 2025 Young Artist award, where the judges commended them for a “commitment to new music that’s thrilling in its fearlessness…their programmes and collaborations fizz with style, energy and invention”.
12 Ensemble have previously collaborated with GBSR for Oliver Leith's opera Last Days and Doom and the Dooms alongside guitarist Sean Shibe, as well as Laurence Osborn's Ivor Novello Award winning composition Tomb!
