Love Bomb is conceived as an experiment in heightened listening. By this we mean that the performance invites our participants to be fully present in body, mind and soul in the act of listening; to be open to being sounded through from head to heart; to sense the shock of the live in a context of music’s increasing mediatisation; and to experience the deeply human (and potentially alarming) intimacy of close musical encounter. The performance centres on Claudio Monteverdi’s celebrated Lamento della Ninfa (1638), paired with Heinrich Ignaz Biber’s Passacaglia for solo violin, which riffs on the same descending lament bass, as well as Henry Purcell’s song O Solitude, with its own mesmerically repeating bassline. Framed by a sound installation that draws us into a space of altered reality and sharpened anticipation, the performance bids its participants to empathise viscerally with the nymph’s lament, while savouring its musical pleasures in all its multisensory richness.
This event is curated by Cambridge-based American artist Anna Brownsted, Delia Casadei, Stephane Crayton, Rachel Stroud, and Bettina Varwig.
Performers:
Voice Laura Newey, Maryam Giraud, Myriam Lowe, Rachel Segman
Violin Stephane Crayton, Rachel Stroud
Cello Mika Hyman
Read more about the background to the event here: https://musicatcambridge.wordpress.com/2025/11/18/bettina-varwig-on-creative-conversations/
