The Albany
Friday, April 10
17:00 - 00:00
2A Douglas Way
London
SE8 4AG
Tickets through The Albany
Komuna Collective & Biz_ko
Saturday, April 11
18:30 - 19:30
The Komuna Collective is a group of artists, DJs and musicians committed to experimentation. Formed in 2022, Komuna launched in an underground nightclub in Oxford. Since then, they have performed at London Fashion Week, Riposte Queer Raves, Classical:NEXT (Berlin, May 2025) and Hjorted Art and Music (Sweden 2025) as well as in nightclubs and concert halls around Oxford and London. Their work has been supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, Arts Council England, PRS Foundation and The Oxford Research Centre for Humanities.
Their debut album ‘Views from the Real World’ was released in December 2024. A 30-minute work for string quartet, and electronics, it digests everything from Bach to Beyoncé, Reddit to Minecraft, Critical Psychiatry to personal rejections, and mashes it all together into a maximalist tongue-in-cheek soundworld.
Fantasies and Fallacies, is a collaboration between multi disciplinary artists Biz_ko and Toby Anderson. It sits somewhere between operetta and cabaret, reflecting on queer relationships and the passage of time. Each text, written by Biz.ko and set to music by Anderson, explores a relationship and how they (and we) change with time. In preparation for the festival, Anderson has rearranged the piece for voice, quartet, and live electronics, making this our first collaboration.
‘Blending tradition and futurism … What starts as a philosophical take on Ligeti’s impactful material soon transforms into a practical stream of avant-garde tones and orchestral flair.’ - Mesmerised
ALIVE in conversation, Yumé NET and t l k
20:15 - 21:00
What does it mean to be alive? Over the last few years, AI has rapidly taken root in our lives. From assisting in niche scientific tasks to now taking on the roles of artists, therapists, police, soldiers, friends. As these tools evolve and their output increasingly resembles ours, a natural question arises: what sets us apart? In a world pervaded by artificial mirages of humanness, what makes us, us?
This live performance explores our collective humanity, and how in some ways it has been transmuted, and in others, has persevered.
This performance is a meeting of two worlds for the first time. Worlds crafted by t l k and Yumé NET - two artists with highly distinctive sonic fingerprints, blending the natural and digital, organic and electronic, real and ethereal. These two storytellers weave their respective tapestries with different threads. But their threads share an origin. In this performance, they run shoulder to shoulder, weave under and over each other, fuse their strands to spin a tale, never-before-told, that nonetheless feels like a reunion.
"truly transportive” / “ this music is going to reach people and places far and wide" - BBC6 Music
“hard to classify and impossible to ignore, you can’t hear that voice and not want to hear more” - Turn & Work
BULLYACHE
21:45 - 22:30
BULLYACHE (Courtney Tylor Deyn and Jacob Samuel) make interdisciplinary, music and dance performance works. They have made three full length works, TOM and Who Hurt You? and A Good Man Is Hard to Find, that have toured and sold-out internationally. “Like live music videos crossed with avant-garde dance theatre.” - Guardian
They will perform an excerpt of a live performance and music work that has been in development at places such as Transmissions Festival and Warp X Barbican. Conceptually, the most 'music concert' of their works, the piece plays like a hyper saturated collage of festival and club headline slots.
”Like a live music video crossed with avant-garde dance theatre – and utterly steeped in young queer British culture” - The Guardian
HEZEN
23:00 - 00:00
HEZEN is a French multidisciplinary artist based in London. A core member & resident of @playbody.london, her hybrid live sets effortlessly blend techno with a full spectrum of genres, ranging from opera to shatta, movie soundtracks to ambient, carefully tied together with HEZEN’s own production and live vocals.
2025 has seen HEZEN's career take a step up; from the opening of V&A East’s Storehouse to playing London’s most vital queer events, including Body Movements festival, Club Are and Riposte, from joining FKA Twigs for her Mercury Prize 2025 performance to debuting at Fabric and Fold, plus lauded guest mixes for Refuge Worldwide and NTS (where her human microphone performance alone has drawn nearly a million views).
“London-based French producer, HEZEN, is amazing. Full stop.” – WONDERLAND
“HEZEN pushes the boundaries of artistic expression” – KALTBLUT
Hoxton Hall
Saturday, April 11
17:30 - 23:00
130 Hoxton St
London
N1 6SH
Tickets through Hoxton Hall
The Fourth Choir
Friday, April 10
18:00 - 18:45
In this scripted concert, London’s classical queer choir, The Fourth Choir, celebrates the Trans and Non-Binary community, past and present. The script, developed by the Choir's Trans and Non-Binary members, tells the stories of Trans people who found fulfilment in their new lives - people like Anastasius Rosenstengel, a Trans man in eighteenth-century Germany who joined the Hanoverian army as a musketeer and married his beloved, Margaretha Mühlhahn, not once but twice, in both Catholic and Protestant churches. People like the exotic Chevalier d’Eon who defeated the best swordsmen in Georgian London whilst wearing female clothes. The a cappella choral music celebrating these fascinating people will range from the gorgeous Renaissance polyphony of Clemens non Papa and the lush harmonies of Ravel to pieces by contemporary Trans composers Michael Bussewitz-Quarm, Pax Kessler and Courage Barda.
"sung with precision and deep musicality by this exceptional LGBTQ+ choir” The Observer
“the quality of this choir is outstanding. From Perotinus and Purcell to Copland and Barber, everything sounded flawless” Trouw, the Netherlands
“this exceptionally polished LGBTQ+ choir” The Guardian
Scene Unseen, Jessica Walker and Joseph Atkins
19:15 - 20:10
Scene Unseen is a powerful new staged song cycle. Part cabaret, part art song, it explores gender identity, sexuality, and ancestry, through the lens of Jessica’s fractured relationship with her birth father. As the narrative unfolds, she goes on a journey of discovery about her true self, including the extraordinary secret at the heart of her heritage.
Scene Unseen is an intimate, personal story with universal themes, expressed through Atkins and Walker’s uncategorisable musical mix of humour, classicism, torch, and a touch of Eighties synth.
Scene Unseen was originally conceived as a film, released in September 2022, directed by James Dacre, and produced by Royal and Derngate theatre and ETO at Home. Its staged premiere was at JW3 in 2024.
“original, thought-provoking, and funny with a refreshing new slant on gender identity” Musical Theatre Review
“Walker….sings with a spontaneity that perfectly dovetails with Atkins’ composition” The Reviews Hub
If It Be Sin, Will Tosh and Joseph Atkins
Artwork by Clive Hicks-Jenkins“If it be sin to love a lovely lad,
O then sin I…”
We’re in London, in autumn 1594. It’s William Shakespeare’s town, of course – Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream will soon be seen on stage. Enter poet Richard Barnfield, a twenty-year-old university graduate who has spent the summer consuming all the louche and homoerotic literature he can find. He’s ready to try something that Elizabethan England has never seen before – passionate, explosive poems that refuse to apologise for same-sex desire.
Four centuries later, prepare to meet Barnfield’s astonishing queer verse in an entirely new form. A surprise well known actor will bring England’s first queer poet laureate to life in new musical settings written and accompanied by acclaimed composer-pianist Joseph Atkins. Our guide through Barnfield’s world is Will Tosh, author of the 2025 Theatre Book of the Year Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare.
If It Be Sin reveals Barnfield’s dazzling rise, instant notoriety, and sudden fall – as well as his expunging from the canon by homophobic critics. It’s a celebration in song of a rediscovered queer voice, who speaks urgently to us from the golden age of Shakespeare.
‘[Will Tosh is] Fluent and witty’ The Guardian
‘Joseph Atkins, a superb and sensitive pianist.’ New York Times
20:45 - 21:30
Take the Helm, Mantawoman
22:00 - 22:40
Mantawoman – praised by Yo-Yo Ma as “courageous, passionate, truth-seeking” – will perform a set of original music on yangqin (Chinese hammered dulcimer), including three new songs.
Born in San Francisco, Mantawoman is an inventive yangqin virtuoso and a heartfelt singer-songwriter who draws inspiration from Daoist philosophy and the mysteries of the ocean. Mantawoman’s “hypno-pop” sound blends traditional Chinese musicality and the iridescent timbre of her percussive string instrument with modern lyricism and production.
As a former co-director of Tangram, Mantawoman (fka Reylon Yount) performed actively in London from 2019-2023. Prior to that, she toured internationally with the Silkroad Ensemble, playing venues such as Lincoln Center and Tanglewood, and became the first yangqin player to feature on a GRAMMY-winning album (Sing Me Home, 2016). She has recorded on soundtracks for Marvel’s SHANG CHI and Netflix’s 1899, and shared the stage with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Rhiannon Giddens, Kayhan Kalhor, and Caroline Polachek.
Mantawoman intends to musically offer the queer and trans community some much-needed joy, compassion and romantic abandon. Accompanied by Rocco. – a seasoned bassist and former world champion beatboxer – Mantawoman will conjure a soundworld that feels like a gentle, psychedelic revelation.
“The artist I have been waiting for my whole life!” Emma-Lee Moss
Space Talk
Sunday, April 12
17:00 - 23:00
18-20 St John St, Barbican
London
EC1M 4AY
FREE ENTRY
No tickets required but put it in your diary!
TRANS VOICES, led by Coda Nicolaeff and ILĀ
Sunday, April 12
20:00 - 20:45
How do you resist the systemic erasure of your right to exist? TRANS VOICES say: ENOUGH. Co-founded by ILĀ and Coda Nicolaeff, this trans-led vocal collective channels rage, hope, and humanity into sculpted sound, singing a defiant future into being.
Fusing choral tradition with AI synthesis, immersive electronics, and quantum audio processes rooted in ILĀ’s pioneering practice, TRANS VOICES reimagine the voice as a site of resistance, transformation, and deep relation. Their work explores trans vocality, where voice becomes not just sound, but a radical act of embodiment and activism.
Recent works include UN/BOUND, a critically acclaimed installation premiered at the Barbican’s FEEL THE SOUND, praised by the Financial Times as “the standout” of the exhibition and now embarking on a five-year world tour. TRANS VOICES also featured in TRANSPOSE, curated by ILĀ at the Barbican’s Pit Theatre, described by Attitude as “a masterclass in sound design — ritualistic, destabilising, technologically unbound.” Their collaboration with ILĀ appears on HAAi’s 2025 album HUMANiSE and its immersive film at Drumsheds, alongside Jon Hopkins and Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip).
TRANS VOICES is part of the London Contemporary Voices family.
The Orchestral Dance Music Experiment, Jess Hoskins
21:30 - 22:20
The Orchestral Dance Music Experiment fuses electronic dance music and contemporary live instrumentals to bring you a club night like no other. Come prepared to move to a whole range of tunes – from percussive breakbeat and minimal techno to uplifting house – all heard in a fresh light alongside brand new composed and improvised instrumental parts.
ODME was founded by conductor and DJ Jess Hoskins in 2025, curious to explore the sonic possibilities of bringing live instrumentals into the club space. With a deep love for the ever-evolving queer clubbing scene in London, and an understanding of the liberatory potential of the dance floor, Jess sees this as a celebration of dance music culture. In combining it with their passion for contemporary instrumental music, they hope to open up new possibilities for DJs, composers, listeners and dancers in both scenes.