Ages 18-25
Train and perform with professional musicians for Longplayer Live, a 1000-minute performance of a section of a 1000-year-long piece of music, as part of Roundhouse’s Three Sixty Festival in April 2025.
Longplayer Live is a rare and unique opportunity for 18-25-year-olds to train and perform with professional musicians as part of a monumental live performance of Longplayer.
You’ll work alongside Longplayer’s composer, Jem Finer, and long-standing performer Ansuman Biswas to explore how to play this 1000-year-long composition using a large orchestral instrument made of singing bowls.
36 participants will join this one-of-a-kind creative programme. Following the workshop, 18 young people will be chosen to perform alongside 18 professional musicians in an extraordinary live event celebrating Longplayer’s 25th anniversary at the Roundhouse’s Three Sixty Festival in April 2025.
This is your chance to be part of history and explore creative, musical, and philosophical engagement along the way!
A 1000-year-long piece of music, Longplayer has been playing continuously since the first moments of this millennium and is composed to continue until the final moments of the next.
On 5 April 2025, in Longplayer’s 25th anniversary year, Longplayer returns to the Roundhouse for a performance of the 1000-minute section of its score, as written for that particular time and date, from 7.20am to midnight.
Longplayer’s duration means that, given the unknowability of the future, its score was written so as to be independent of any one technology. For most of its life it has been performed by computers, while its caretakers, the Longplayer Trust, explore alternatives which have included the use of the human voice, vinyl records, code, a beam of light and, as first heard at the Roundhouse in 2009, live performance by musicians.
Akin to what Longplayer’s composer, Jem Finer, calls a ‘vast, Bronze Age synthesiser’, Longplayer Live is performed on a large orchestral instrument comprised of 234 singing bowls, arranged in six concentric rings and played by shifts of six to twelve people at any one time, reading from a graphic score.
Longplayer hopes to enrich intergenerational conversations about how we can imagine the future. For this 25th anniversary performance, we are inviting 18 young people from the Roundhouse’s creative community to join the orchestra of musicians and artists: a meeting of present and future custodians who will shape Longplayer’s next 25 years.
Longplayer Live is generously supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust and Urban Space Management. Thanks is also due to Universal Works who will be supporting, designing and making the performers’ clothing.
Taking part in the Longplayer Live workshop offers the chance to:
As well as an opportunity to perform as part of Longplayer Live, we would like to invite participants to become future custodians of Longplayer, participating in conversations and events that will help to shape its future. We encourage all young creatives wishing to get involved with Longplayer to sign up to our newsletter for future opportunities here and to the Roundhouse here.
Uncomfortable with labels such as composer, sound artist or musician, Jem Finer sees all of his activities as emanating from the same obsessive curiosity that has led him, among other things, to make films, take photographs, form bands, draw, write, perform, compose, play music and build installations. An enduring fascination with deep time and space has been the impetus behind much of his work. Some of his other projects can be found on the following sites. Score for a Hole in the Ground | Cosmolog | on earth as in heaven | jemfiner.net | Supercomputer | Mobile Sinfonia
Ansuman Biswas has an inter-disciplinary practice which has included directing Shakespeare, translating Tagore, travelling with shamans in the Gobi Desert and wandering minstrels in Bengal, being employed as an ornamental hermit in the English countryside, holding seminars in a Burmese monastery, organizing activists in Soweto, running a nightclub for women on the Reeperbahn, surviving blindfolded in an unknown place, being locked in a Gothic tower alone for forty days and nights, singing for twenty-four hours non-stop, living for a week with nothing but what spectators would give him, sitting in a box for ten days with no food or light, being a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, bathing strangers, playing with terminally ill children, making a radio telescope sing and dance, flying on a real, live, magic carpet, and stopping time.
This opportunity is open to 18-25-year-olds with an interest in music, performance, or creative engagement with long-term ideas.
You don’t need any previous experience, musical skills, or knowledge of how to read music. Whether you play an instrument, are drawn to creative projects, or are curious about durational performance, this programme is for you. We welcome applications from all backgrounds, experiences, and skill levels.
Book the workshop now to secure your place. After the workshops, based on potential and engagement, 18 participants will be chosen to perform as part of the live performance on 5 April. Those selected will be paid for the rehearsal (£50) and performance (£100).
While the performance will run from 7.20 am-midnight, workshop participants will be scheduled in performance slots with breaks between 9am and 6pm.
Key dates:
The half-day rehearsal will be compensated at £50 and the performance at £100. If you need help to pay for things like transport or childcare, we can help. Find out how you can get support.
We are committed to supporting D/deaf, disabled and neurodiverse young people, those with medical conditions, access requirements or any lived experience that may require adaptation, support or sensitivity. If there is anything you would like to let us (our youth workers, tutors or staff) know that will support your enjoyment and access, you can do so by emailing us at advicebase@roundhouse.org.uk, and we will contact you to discuss further how to best support your engagement.