Concert: Aki Pasoulas and Newton Armstrong

As part of the 2026 SPARC Symposium, a concert featuring immersive electroacoustic works by Aki Pasoulas, and the premiere of Newton Armstrong's slowly unfolding 'speculative synthesizer folk music', April, May, June.

Admission

General admission: £5
City students, staff, unwaged and concessions: Free admission - please sign up to attend here.

Please note, separate bookings are required for each Symposium event. To see all events (27-31 May 2026), please visit the Symposium overview page.

Programme:

Aki Pasoulas, Irides (2017)
Irides literally means rainbows. In Greco-Roman mythology, rainbows were thought to be bridges made by the goddess Iris and connected heaven and earth. Iridesare multicoloured arcs caused by diffraction and dispersion of light by water droplets in the air. Similarly, in this composition, momentary sunny spells and droplets of rain give rise to spectra, bands of colours, arcs that form double, triple and multiple sonic rainbows that permeate the scenery of the piece. Listeners are invited to inhabit these scenes not as a linear journey, but as an immersive field of sonic colours and shapes: spectral arcs, rain-soaked resonances, and elastic time structures that evoke both memory and moment.

Irides is published by Sonos Localia (binaural version, 2018); and by Stolen Mirror (stereo version, 2021).

Aki Pasoulas, Wetlands (2021) 
Wetlands is an immersive electroacoustic composition shaped from field recordings gathered in the urban wetlands of Valdivia, Chile. The composition explores a dialogue between sounds living, moving and interacting in those spaces, creating tension and release moments when these meet with human-made noise and activity. All sounds live in a cooperative coexistence, even during the most intense moments in this sonic world. Wetlands invites listeners to inhabit this sonic ecology, encouraging reflection on our relationship with environments that are both resilient and increasingly at risk.

Wetlands was commissioned by the SoundLapse research team (Chile). It is published by Gruenrekorder (binaural version, 2021); and by HELMCA (stereo version, 2023).

Newton Armstrong, April, May, June (2025-26)
A period of illness has led me to spend more time than I once did at home with synthesisers. Some new preoccupations have emerged from these sessions, including the weird interstitial zones between tuning, harmony, and space; slow processes of unfolding and transformation; and speculative folk musics from planets I'd like to live on. These three short-ish pieces embody these ideas.

About Aki Pasoulas

Dr Aki Pasoulas is an electroacoustic composer working with recorded, environmental, and processed sound. He is Reader in Music at the University of Kent and Director of Music & Audio Arts Sound Theatre (MAAST). He led the research project Sonic Palimpsest and co-led Liminal Spaces and Songs from the Shadows, exploring heritage sound, remote environments, and nineteenth-century soundscapes. His research examines acousmatic music, time perception across the senses, psychoacoustics, spatial sound, and soundscape ecology. Published by KPM/EMI, ICMA, Sonos Localia, Stolen Mirror, Gruenrekorder, HELMCA, Pinpoint Scotland, and Cambridge and Oxford University Press. His compositions are performed worldwide.

About Newton Armstrong

Newton Armstrong is a composer, electronics performer, and occasional builder of electronic musical instruments. His work focuses on forms of music that emerge in the composed interactions between people, technologies, and their environments. He is Professor of Music at City St. George's, University of London.