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“Playing SLEEP live is unforgettable. The feeling of a community of strangers deeply connected through this music ritual is overwhelming, and like no other musical experience,” Max Richter explains.
Released in 2015 and co-conceived with his creative partner Yulia Mahr, Richter’s magnum opus, ‘SLEEP’, is regarded as one of the most ambitious and culturally significant classical music projects of the 21st century. An 8 ½ hour musical enquiry into how sound and the sleeping mind interact, it explores the effects of subsonics and repetition to enhance slow wave sleep.
The all-night performances of SLEEP have become distinctive cultural events that challenge how we experience music; blurring the lines between concert and art installation and taking place in the world's most iconic settings such as the Sydney Opera House, Philharmonie de Paris and The Great Wall of China. The milestone tenth anniversary this September will see Richter bring this transcendental live experience to new audiences by playing the largest SLEEP shows to date at Alexandra Palace in London on 5 and 6 September. This will mark the first time Richter has performed SLEEP in London since 2017.
In tandem with the new SLEEP performances, Richter has also announced a brand new album, Sleep Circle.
The album is a hallucinatory 90-minute trip into the hypnagogic state – the time period when the brain transitions between a state of wakefulness and sleep and the state during which the individual dreams. Performing an abridged version of SLEEP live in 2023 offered Richter new insights into his epic composition and led him to approach the songs with a more traditional architecture, resulting in this new recording being laid down at Studio Richter Mahr. The length is not arbitrary however; 90 minutes is the length of a typical REM cycle.
English (US) · 