HAVE you ever wondered what the future of live music could be like? We may be about to get a glimpse of it!

On Saturday (March 19) at the Turner Sims, Southampton, composer and band leader, Dan Mar-Molinero, will lead a large jazz orchestra bursting with local talent plus two superstars of the international scene, Julian Arguelles (sax) and Jasper Hoiby (bass). Joining them will be the ‘non-human’ artificial intelligence performer, the ‘Jazz Transformer’!

The ‘Jazz Transformer’ is a data algorithm which draws on hundreds of performances from jazz greats such as Charlie Parker and John Coltrane to create its own musical responses to jazz compositions. Before the concert, the ‘Jazz Transformer’ team are provided with scores of the music being performed. The AI algorithm then creates its own improvisation which will then be worked into the band’s arrangements during the concert, essentially becoming a ’non-human’ member of the band!

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The event is sponsored by the University of Southampton’s Music Department and the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. It came about through a collaboration between Mar-Molinero and Dr Thomas Irvine, Associate Professor in Music and Alan Turning Fellow at the University. Irvine’s current research includes leading the project “Jazz as Social Machine” at the Turing Institute. The project examines, how humans and machines can work together in the field of musical improvisation, and what this collaboration can tell us about the future of human machine interaction, AI art—and jazz itself.

The concert features music from Mar-Molinero’s new album to be released later in the year which features many professional musicians from the Southampton area.

Before the concert there will be a roundtable discussion chaired by Irvine featuring Dame Wendy Hall FRS, Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University and Executive Director of the Web Science Institute in conversation with Høiby, Argüelles and Mar-Molinero, the Head of Jazz, Pop & Musical Theatre at the University of Southampton whose work has included BAFTA nominated TV scores, a score for the FIFA series and hit records for the likes of Craig David, Gareth Gates and Mel C.

Tickets from turnersims.co.uk