Riot Ensemble with Hannah Williams & Stephanie Lamprea: LOVE LETTERS [WITH AI]

Composer Benjamin Oliver (University of Southampton) and Riot Ensemble present contemporary works that explore creative applications of artificial intelligence (AI).

‘British soul sensation’ Hannah Williams joins forces with a new music superstar Riot Ensemble quartet to premiere Benjamin Oliver’s song cycle LOVE LETTERS. The work includes melancholic, absurd and dramatic expressions of love made with LovelaceGPT, a new AI text generation model developed by a University of Southampton research team including Will May (English) and Shoaib Jameel (ECS).

AI music and text generation, as well as sound processing, feature in five distinctive works by leading young composers. The Riot quartet will perform instrumental works by Megan Steinberg and Zakiya Leeming, with the ‘startingly gifted’ Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea joining the ensemble for pieces by Rob Laidlow, Anna Appleby and Oliver Sellwood.

The show will be informally compered by Ben Oliver. You will have a chance to hear from the composers, performers and research team about their experiences of working artistically with AI. There will be a chance to ask any questions you have too!

Benjamin Oliver LOVE LETTERS (2023)
Anna Appleby Reservoir (2022, rev. 2023)
Rob Laidlow Post-Singularity Songs (2023)
Zakiya Leeming Meanwhile, in other dreams (2023)
Oliver Sellwood Charlene from Big Data (2021, rev. 2023)
Megan Steinberg New Inventions (2023)

Hannah Williams voice
Stephanie Lamprea soprano
Adam Swayne piano, synth
Siwan Rhys piano, toy piano, synth
Sam Wilson drum kit
George Barton percussion
Blake Troise synth design and build
Aaron Holloway-Nahum director and sound design

This event will last approximately 90 minutes, including an interval.

Entrance is FREE and all are welcome. All audience members must book a ticket.

The LOVE LETTERS [WITH AI] project is supported by the University of Southampton Web Science Institute & Department of Music