BBC Invites Listeners to Sleep During Max Richter's New Work

Max Richter (Photo: Yulia Mahr)

BBC Invites Listeners to Sleep During Max Richter's New Work

Richter's 'SLEEP' is a 'lullaby for a frenetic world'.

From midnight on Saturday 26 September, until 8am the following day, BBC Radio 3 will broadcast a live performance of British composer Max Richter’s new work SLEEPListeners are invited to turn on the station overnight and hear the composition while sleeping.

Composed in consultation with American neuroscientist David Eagleman, Richter describes it as ‘lullaby for a frenetic world’.

The performance and broadcast is part of BBC Radio 3’s Why Music?, a weekend of events at the Wellcome Collection museum in London that explore music’s impact on the human brain, on physical and mental well-being, and on language, literature and memory.

Richter commented:

The BBC Radio 3 Why Music? broadcasts from Wellcome Collection neatly sum up what my piece is about. I think of SLEEP as an experiment into how music and the mind can interact in this other state of consciousness, one we all spend decades of our lives completely immersed in, but which is so far rather poorly understood.

The three-day Why Music? programme also features a public recital-lecture by psychiatrist and concert pianist Dr Richard Kogan, presenter Andrew McGregor finds out how and why the brain responds to different sorts of music through studying his own brain scan, and pianist James Rhodes discusses music and mental illness; plus world premieres from Antonia Barnett-McIntosh and Christopher Fox, and wildlife sound-recordist Chris Watson explores the links between music and the sounds of nature.

In the week leading up to the performance of SLEEP, Radio 3 will run a competition on In Tune and Breakfast offering four listeners a chance to attend the live performance.

For more, visit www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02zjcpx 
or www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/why-music

Read about another ‘sleep work’, Peter Lenaerts’ MicroSleepDub, which was performed at the Borealis festival in Bergen in April.

Published on 4 September 2015

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