Longplayer Live
From the outset, Longplayer was a project designed to seek out its own survival strategies. Over the last few years this effort has been focussed on the development of Longplayer Live, a long-durational live performance for 6 – 12 players. Representing a unique fragment from an enormous continuum, each live performance is calculated to synchronize precisely with Longplayer’s 1000-year score.
Longplayer Live is performed on a giant orchestral instrument comprised of 234 Singing Bowls, arranged in six concentric rings. The largest of these rings measures 20 metres (66 ft) in diameter, forming the outer edge of a vast musical installation.
The instrument and performance are based on Jem Finer’s graphical score of 2002. Accordingly, Longplayer’s six parallel transpositions are configured as a nested arrangement of ring-shaped tables, atop which sit the enormous array of tuned bells required to produce every sound in Longplayer’s 1000-year span. (A more detailed explanation of how the performance works is in Finer’s Composer’s Note of 2009.)
Longplayer Live’s inaugural performance took place over 1000 minutes (16 hours 40 minutes) on September 12th – 13th, 2009. A second performance of 3 hours’ length rang in the New Year at the Lighthouse on December 31st 2009.
On the 5th April 2025, in Longplayer’s 25th anniversary year, Longplayer will return to the Roundhouse for a performance of the 1000-minute section of its score, as written for that particular time and date, from 7.20am to midnight. Full information and tickets here.
A WORD FOR THE FUTURE
The Longplayer Live instrument is still under construction, with new sections being completed as they are needed for individual performances. In order to fund the continuing work on the instrument and the production of future live events, The Longplayer Trust is inviting donations on a bowl-by-bowl basis. When you fund a bowl, it is engraved with a word of your choice.
Once the 234-bowl instrument is completed, our long term ambition is to secure a permanent location for it, where Longplayer can play on into the foreseeable and unforeseeable future.
Dozens of supporters have already put their marks on the Longplayer bowls, with the 1st circle now completely sold out. Every bowl bought is a piece of the future.
6th Circle: Contrabass£1000
5th Circle: Bass£500
4th Circle: Baritone£250
3rd Circle: Tenor£150
2nd Circle: Alto£100
1st Circle: Soprano£50
After making your donation through paypal or bank transfer you will receive a receipt and confirmation. You may choose your inscription now or at a later date. Longplayer is a charitable trust, Registered Charity no. 108 7243.
If you don’t wish to buy a bowl but are still interested in supporting Longplayer, please consider making a donation via our Paypal account or bank transfer.
LONGPLAYER LIVE
The Roundhouse, London, 12 – 13 September 2009
Jem Finer’s Longplayer is famously the longest non-repeating piece of music ever composed. It has been playing continuously since the first moments of the millennium, performed by computers around the world.
On September 12th, 2009, Longplayer took a giant step forward with its first-ever live performance, at the Roundhouse, London. This historic 17-hour event spanned 1000 minutes of Longplayer’s 1000-year duration, from 08:00 on the morning of the 12th until 00:40 on the morning of the 13th.
For this extraordinary stretch of time, Longplayer’s fluid, sonorous tones rang out under the Roundhouse’s steel and glass canopy, with the uniformed players performing in 30- and 60-minute shifts, working from the demanding, continuous score with clockwork precision. Audiences drifted around the perimeter of the room, with most listeners staying for hours at a time and many leaving the venue to return for later shifts.
More than 7 years in planning, the debut of Longplayer Live introduced the spectacular, partially-completed Longplayer instrument, played by a 26-strong all-star orchestra of musicians and artists.
Longplayer Musicians:
Douglas Benford • Steve Beresford • Gina Birch • John Bisset • Ansuman Biswas • Jack Brennan • Tom Chant • Peter Cusak • Rhodri Davis • Benedict Drew • Jem Finer • Iris Garrelfs • Darryl Hunt • Ivor Kallin • Andrew Kötting • J Maizlish Mole • Kaffe Matthews • Graeme Miller • Hayley Newman • Michael Ormiston • Spider Stacy • Emma Stow • David Toop • Candida Valentino • Laura Williams [ READ MORE ]
In conjunction with the live performance, the Artangel Longplayer 2009 Conversation – an epic relay of one-to-one conversations inspired by the philosophical and practical implications of ‘long time’ and long-term thinking – took place in the Roundhouse’s Studio Theatre. Opened and closed by writer Jeanette Winterson, this 12-hour marathon included 20 leading writers, filmmakers, scientists, academics and technology activists.
Long Conversationalists:
Rachel Armstrong • Charles Arsène-Henry • Cory Doctorow • Marcus du Sautoy • Sophie Fiennes • Daniel Glaser • Bonnie Greer • Mark Haddon • Lisa Jardine • Andrew Kötting • Mark Lythgoe • Mark Miodownik • Susie Orbach • Ruth Padel • Robert Peston • Steven Rose • David Toop • Vincent Walsh • Jeanette Winterson • Lewis Wolpert [ READ MORE ]
View Finer’s 1000-second time-lapse video, Links to reviews and further documentation of the event can be found on the news page.
Full credits for the Longplayer Live event, including biographies of the musicians, can be found on the Roundhouse 2009 Credits page. Recordings of the Long Conversation and biographies of the speakers can be found on the The Artangel Longplayer Conversations page.
LONGPLAYER TURNS TEN
The Lighthouse, London, 31 December 2009
The second Longplayer Live performance took place at Longplayer’s 10th annual New Year’s Eve event at the Lighthouse, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London.
Marking the first complete decade of Longplayer’s 1000-year duration, the performance lasted 3 hours from 12 midday to 3 p.m. GMT (i.e. 00:00 – 03:00 IDLE, the first three hours of the new year at the International Date Line).
Installed in the ground-level Chain Store under the Lighthouse, Longplayer’s rings were realigned in a simplified, semi-circular configuration along chalked track-lines.
LONGPLAYER LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 16 October 2010
The third Longplayer Live performance, together with a Long Conversation (at the C.M.J.), took place in San Francisco on October the 16th, 2010, presented by the Long Now Foundation. Participants are listed here.
The conversations can be watched and listened to here.
On the 31st December 2024, Longplayer completed the first quarter century of its score. Throughout 2025, this milestone will be marked with an international programme of events, collaborations and initiatives celebrating the work’s unique articulation of time and its dimensions, and the engagement with the long-term that Longplayer continues to inspire.
LONGPLAYER LIVE, Roundhouse, London 2025
The first of our 25th anniversary events was Longplayer Live, the first live performance of the work in over a decade, which took place at the Roundhouse on the 5th April 2025.
Image credit: Kristian Buus.
7.20am-midnight, 5th April 2025
On 5th April 2025, Longplayer returned to the Roundhouse for a performance of the 1000-minute section of its score, as written for that particular time and date, from 7.20am to midnight.
Audiences were invited to spend as long as they wish listening and watching, and to move around or find a space to rest, with the possibility to leave and return to the venue throughout the performance’s duration.
Longplayer hopes to enrich intergenerational conversations about how we can imagine the future. For this 25th anniversary performance, 16 young people from the Roundhouse’s creative community joined the orchestra of musicians and artists: a meeting of present and future custodians who will shape Longplayer’s next 25 years.
Longplayer Live was generously supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust and Urban Space Management. Thanks is also due to Universal Works for their generosity in supporting, designing and making the performers’ clothing.
Sponsor a Longplayer Live bowl
Did you know that you can sponsor one of the singing bowls that makes up the Longplayer Live instrument? In order to fund the continuing work on the instrument and the production of events, The Longplayer Trust is inviting donations on a bowl-by-bowl basis.
When you sponsor a bowl, it is engraved with a word of your choice. You can record a special occasion, commemorate a person or event, or inscribe a significant word with personal resonances, which will be heard vibrating in Longplayer Live performances.
Only seven bowls of the 234-wide instrument now remain to be sponsored.
If you enjoy Longplayer, and would like to support the Longplayer Trust in our efforts to make it available to as wide an audience as possible, then please consider sponsoring a bowl or making a donation. You can find out more on how to do this here: https://longplayer.org/support/sponsor-a-bowl/
Please see the news page for up-to-date information.
