Elaine Chew (piano) presented Boulez Reloaded with Gérard Assayag (somax2) and Thierry Miroglio (percussion) with HeartFM (heart & breath scientific visuals) in a collaboration between ERC REACH (somax2) and ERC COSMOS (heartfm). Boulez Reloaded opened the Opening Concert of Musicacoustica, the première electronic music festival in China, on 24 September 2025 at the Standard Concert Hall of the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music in Hangzhou.
Acknowledgements to software engineers Charles Al. Picasso (heartfm) and Joakim Borg (somax2), and thanks to host Professor Zhang Xiaofu (father of electronic music in China), student guides Laurent and Lucas many other volunteers. With thanks to the Consulate General of France in Shanghai Alliance française de Shanghai for their kind sponsorship.
See related posts
• Musicacoustica International Lecture Series, Competition Jury, Award Ceremony
• REACH Chinese Tour and Boulez reloaded action (on ERC REACH Blog)
Video
04 Boulez Reloaded – for Percussion, Piano and Electronic Music (2025/15’00”/World Premiere)
INSPIRED BY Composer: Pierre Boulez (France)
Live Electronics: Gérard Assayag (France)
Piano: Elaine Chew (UK)
Percussion: Thierry Miroglio (France)
Conceived in homage to Pierre Boulez on his centennial celebrated worldwide, “Boulez Reloaded” is a musical trio that brings to the live stage human-AI cocreativity, AI’s potential in precision music medicine, and skilled human improvisers. An open, semi-improvised dialog between multiple confronting music streams will draw material from the rich musical history that shaped Boulez and his music. Whilst the human protagonists grapple with the cocreative scenarios fed by the autonomous AI agents, their heartbeats, breathing, and heart rate variability—traces that form the basis of AI models for music theranostics—are captured by wearable sensors and visualised scientifically.
The musical trio brings together technologies developed in ERC REACH and ERC COSMOS European project: Somax2 (human-AI improvisation) and heartfm (real-time capture and visualization of music and physiology). Elaine Chew will perform, adapt, and improvise on excerpts of pieces including Boulez’s Fragment d’une ébauche (1987), and Ravel’s Jeux d’eau (1901). Gérard Assayag will guide somax2’s improvisations towards different interaction strategies and sonic material drawn from Elaine’s live playing and recording of Boulez’s Sonata (1946), as well as corpus material from REACH musicians-in-residence including Jean-Brice Godet, Valérie Philippin, and Francesco Guerri. Thierry Miroglio will blend in with various percussions in a “tintinnabulant” (tinkling) spirit that Pierre Boulez would have much appreciated. The musician’s and the machine’s reciprocal listening and adaptation will produce rich and previously unheard combinations.
The ebb and flow of the performers’ breathing, their ECG, heart rate, and heart rate variability, and the music played will be projected on a screen for real-time visualization, capturing the duo’s stress and physiological state changes, and showing entrainment with the music and musical interactions.
Complete video of Musicacoustica opening events at https://bzfpqcvzb.vzan.com/live/page/814102051 (Boulez Reloaded starts around 47:35)
Concert photos
Rehearsal photos
Event poster
MusicAcoustica • Opening Concert
Zhejiang Conservatory of Music
Hangzhou, China
24 September 2025
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