Longplayer live

Saturday 12 September 2009
8.20am - 1am
The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London

Plan of Roundhouse floor, with location of bowls

Jem Finer produced a graphical score (illustrated above), by which the deceptively simple system of advancing loops of which Longplayer is composed can be accurately reproduced.

Based on this score, a performance of a 1000-minute section of Longplayer took place at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London, on 12 September 2009. A relay team of performers - six at any one time - played a 25 metre wide instrument made up of six concentric circular tables holding 234 precisely tuned Tibetan Singing Bowls.

Alongside the unfolding music, a 12-hour series of one-to-one conversations between twenty different speakers on long-term themes will took place in The Roundhouse's Studio Theatre. Initiated by writer Jeanette Winterson and psychotherapist Susie Orbach, the Artangel Longplayer Conversation 2009 continued with speakers including cognitive neuroscientist Daniel Glaser, poet Ruth Padel, artist Marcus Coates, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy and many more.

Also, in an experiment that saw fast, mobile media colliding with long, slow notions of time, Artangel asked social technologist Christian Payne to document the event. Click here to see the HD video he put together (the realtime blog updates posted from the event can still be seen at longplayer.posterous.com).

Full list of long conversationalists:

10:00 - 10:36 Jeanette Winterson with Susie Orbach
10:36 - 11:12 Susie Orbach with Daniel Glaser
11:12 - 11:48 Daniel Glaser with Sophie Fiennes
11:48 - 12:24 Sophie Fiennes with Mark Miodownik
12:24 - 13:00 Mark Miodownik with Cory Doctorow
13:00 - 13:36 Cory Doctorow with Ruth Padel
13:36 - 14:12 Ruth Padel with Lewis Wolpert
14:12 - 14:48 Lewis Wolpert with Charles Arsene-Henry
14:48 - 15:24 Charles Arsene-Henry with Mark Lythgoe
15:24 - 16:00 Mark Lythgoe with Bonnie Greer
16:00 - 16:36 Bonnie Greer with Marcus du Sautoy
16:36 - 17:12 Marcus du Sautoy with Robert Peston
17:12 - 17:48 Robert Peston with Steven Rose
17:48 - 18:24 Steven Rose with Lisa Jardine
18:24 - 19:00 Lisa Jardine with Andrew Kotting
19:00 - 19:36 Andrew Kotting with David Toop
19:36 - 20:12 David Toop with Mark Haddon
20:12 - 20:48 Mark Haddon with Rachel Armstrong
20:48 - 21:24 Rachel Armstrong with Vincent Walsh
21:24 - 22:00 Vincent Walsh with Jeanette Winterson

[Full speaker biogs]

The full list of musicians:

Longplayer Musicians
Douglas Benford
Steve Beresford
Gina Birch
John Bisset
Ansuman Biswas
Tom Chant
Richard Cripps
Peter Cusak
Rhodri Davis
Ben Drew
Jem Finer
Iris Garrelfs
Darryl Hunt
Ivor Kallin
Andrew Kotting
Kaffe Matthews
Graeme Miller
J Maizlish Mole
Hayley Newman
Michael Ormiston
Spider Stacy
Emma Stow
David Toop
Candida Valentino
Laura Williams