Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra festival XVIII: Night 1

Night one of GIOfest hosts GIOglobal and the premiere of Sounding At Sea a virtual reality for dance, music and ecological awareness. Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra festival XVIII: Night 1 Film, virtual reality, networked performance and live improvisation with Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. GIOfest XVIII opens with an evening exploring what improvisation can become when it moves across bodies, species, technologies and geographical borders. The night begins with GIOglobal, bringing together Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s international collaborations through film before moving into a live hybrid performance connecting musicians across distance. The evening also features the world premiere of Sounding At Sea, a new multi-artform work led by musician Alex South and creative XR technologist Michal Lovecky. Exploring the impact of human noise pollution on orcas and other marine mammals, Sounding At Sea brings together virtual reality, movement and improvised music. Movement artists immersed in an underwater VR world generate live video feeds which are projected for the audience while simultaneously becoming a dynamic graphic score for improvising musicians. The evening culminates in Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra live, with the full ensemble free improvisiaiton that has been at the heart of GIO for more than two decades. About GIOfest GIOfest is the annual festival of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO), bringing together improvisers, composers and artists from Glasgow and around the world for performances, collaborations and experiments in collective music-making. GIOfest continues GIO’s long-running exploration of what a large improvising ensemble can be, and who, or what, it might make music with.