William Basinski

William Basinski, an American composer working in ambient music, presents a concert at the Barbican Hall in London, drawing on the recent album Passing the Cup of Sorrows and earlier pieces. The evening is an electronic music event.

William Basinski is an American composer working in ambient music and active since 1978. Born in Houston in 1958, Basinski has spent more than thirty years working in experimental media, first in New York and more recently in California. Trained as a classical musician, Basinski works with obsolete technology and analogue tape loops, producing melancholy soundscapes concerned with the passing of time and the reverberations of memory. The debut album, Watermusic, appeared in 2001 on Raster-Noton.

The concert presents the recent album Passing the Cup of Sorrows, performed with piano, electronics and looped tape, alongside earlier works. The album takes its cue from the shifting asymmetrical patterns of the 20th-century composer Morton Feldman. Its organising idea is "Life Between Lives", a concept in which Basinski uses piano and tape to transform traumatic memories from past lives into a cathartic release in the present.

The Barbican Hall is the concert hall of the Barbican Centre on Silk Street in London, and is home to the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The hall hosts classical and jazz concerts, and this evening brings an electronic and ambient programme to its stage.