An ingenious and thought-provoking concert-experience, collaboratively devised by City’s PhD composers, Gilberto Agostinho, Jonathan Higgins, Soosan Lolavar, Leo Hofmann and Alice Jeffreys.

In 1965, 17 year old wunderkind Ray Kurzweil appeared in a TV show to demonstrate a piano piece, written by a computer he had built. Years later, his skills made him a famous engineer and self-proclaimed futurist – but – what if he had stuck to the music?

More then fifty years later, five composers set up their own game show to present their music. Working with diverse techniques and aesthetics, the interplay of the composers’ works raise questions of automation, authorship, formalisation and creativity. Hosted by Lala, an AI (artificial intelligence) from the late 1980s with a so-so career in instant-social-music-creation, the game show scenario addresses the debate about music and computers, with all its puzzling aspects.