Entitled “Seme” – the latest project in the London based audio-visual artist Max Cooper‘s vast portfolio of work – will be a meditation on the form which yields us, and the world we live in.

The UK debut of Seme takes place at London’s international arts and events centre Barbican across 4th and 5th of April 2024. For this show, Cooper will be joined by Kim Sheehan (soprano), Niels Orens (cello), Tom Hodge (piano), and visuals by multi-disciplinary design studio Architecture Social Club, Yoshi Sodeoka and Davide Quayola.

The 2024 edition of Salzburg Easter Festival will be directed by Sir Antonio Pappano, who has set the theme of the annual festival around the spirit and passion of Italy.

With awards and honours that include Gramophone’s ‘Artist of the Year’ in 2000, the 2003 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera, the 2004 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award, and the Bruno Walter prize from the Académie du Disque Lyrique in Paris, Pappano is currently music director of the Royal Opera House in London and of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

In 2015 he was named the 100th recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gold Medal, the body’s highest honour.

Following Pappano’s guide, Max’s intention for Seme (or “seed”) takes a profound Italo-perspective, mining the region’s rich cultural past by combining historic Italian musical and elegant visual aesthetics with their counterparts from the history of science, philosophy and art.

Max will be joined in collaboration by Sarah Aristidou, critically acclaimed French-Cypriot soprano, and Niels Orens, Belgian cello laureate and electronic composer.

As Max Cooper continues to cut a unique and noteworthy path with an international reputation as a leading electronic musician, his work explores the foundations of nature and society, informed by his PhD in computational biology and expressed through a range of artistic media including sound and music, film, projection and immersive installations.  While the presence of integrated thinking around releasing music has long distinguished Max Cooper, it is the notion of performance and entertainment grafted into his style which really admits Max to charge into new territory.

Max Cooper founded Mesh in 2016 as the platform to explore the intersection of music, science and art.

Salzburg Easter Festival was founded in 1967 by legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan.

Seme presented by Max Cooper will premiere at Salzburg Easter Festival 28th March 2024.