Cafe Oto residency
Monday 12 to Wednesday 14 January 2026
Cafe Oto, London
doors nightly 7:30pm
Plus Minus Ensemble presents three nights of music, joined by special guests Kaj Duncan David and Danish ensemble Scenatet.
Mappings: Monday 12 January
Mads Emil Dreyer • Miniature 1
for four performers — Scenatet
Joanna Bailie • Roll Call
for piano and video — Mark Knoop
Andrea Balency-Béarn • Mappings (El Mapa No Es el Territorio)
for seven instruments — Plus Minus Ensemble
In Mads Emil Dreyer’s Miniature 1, toy carillons create an intimate, dreamlike, and ritualistic world of microtonal melodies. Joanna Bailie’s Roll Call for piano and video takes as its subject a panoramic photograph of the pupils and teachers of a boys’ school in Romford, Essex, made in 1946.
The evening culminates with the premier of Andrea Balency-Béarn’s Mappings (El Mapa No Es el Territorio), a work that transforms personal spaces into immersive soundscapes. Drawing on field recordings from two locations in Mexico City and one in London, the piece reimagines these environments through live performance and digital transformation.
Only birds: Tuesday 13 January
Kaj Duncan David • Only birds know how to call the sun and they do it every morning
lyrics by Maikon K and Kaj Duncan David
performed by Kaj Duncan David and Scenatet
Plus Minus will also perform a set with a very special guest, to be announced soon.
Kaj Duncan David’s Only Birds explores the tension between the artificial and the real, drawing inspiration from electronic voice technologies, new age and psychedelic aesthetics, and the sonic landscapes of video games. A concert-length journey, it frames a subtle, humorous, and deeply human meditation on the boundaries of our own humanity.
Covers: Wednesday 14 January
The final night showcases a project devised and performed by Plus Minus, featuring six works that engage with twentieth-century classics—or with pieces that deserve to be considered classics. Each explores its relationship to the original in a unique way: some make explicit reference through playful arrangements or stylistic transformation, others use the original as a springboard for a new adventure, and in some, the originals linger only as spectral echoes.
Natasha Diels • Adrift (after Julian Carrillo Preludio a Colon 1922)
Alex Hills • Andante and Presto No Longer for String Quartet 2025 (after Ruth Crawford Seeger String Quartet 1931)
György Ligeti • Atmospheres (1961) reimagined by Tom Pauwels
George Antheil • Piano Sonata No.2: The Airplane (1921) reimagined by Benjamin Oliver
Lili Boulanger • Nocturne (1911) arranged by Matthew Shlomowitz
Hildegard Knef • reimagined by Lisa Streich
Guests
- Kaj Duncan David
Scenatet
- Lorenzo Colombo
- Matias Seibæk
- Mikkel Schou
- Marta Sogetti
- Vicky Wright
Plus Minus Ensemble
- Mira Benjamin
- Elsa Bradley
- Roderick Chadwick
- Mark Knoop
- Tom Pauwels
- Alice Purton
- Vicky Wright
Kaj Duncan David is a Berlin-based composer and performer of electronic music. He has released two solo albums and composed large-scale music theatre works such as the award-winning Up Close and Personal (2018) for the Münchener Biennale. Most recently, he co-created the soundtrack for Michelle Moura’s tão carne quanto pedra (2025), commissioned by the São Paulo City Ballet.
Scenatet (Denmark) is one of Europe’s most innovative ensembles, merging score music, performance, and dramaturgy in interdisciplinary, site-specific formats. Founded in 2008, Scenatet challenges artistic conventions and engages audiences through bold, genre-defying works. Collaboration across disciplines is central to its practice, resulting in original and commissioned productions that shape the future of scenic music. With a strong international profile, Scenatet tours widely and collaborates with leading composers, directors, choreographers, dancers, and musicians worldwide.
Plus Minus is a UK-based group dedicated to commissioning new works alongside modern and landmark repertoire. Formed in 2003, the group focuses on performative, electroacoustic, and conceptual pieces, Plus-Minus explores experimental works, including Stockhausen’s 1963 classic, after which the ensemble is named. The ensemble was resident at University of Edinburgh from 2019 to 2024 and in recent years has performed at Whelan’s (Dublin), BBC studios, Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon), MINU festival (Copenhagen) and Klangspuren Schwaz in Austria.
Joanna Bailie is a Berlin based composer whose work often integrates manipulated field recordings, camera obscura, film and other sound media with acoustic instruments.
Andrea Balency-Béarn is a French-Mexican composer, film composer and performer based in London. She is currently researching sound-based interactive systems between acoustic instruments, score and real-time electronics.
Natacha Diels is a Philadelphia-based composer and performer whose work blends choreographed movement, video animation, instrumental practice, and cynical play to construct worlds that are at once wondrous and unsettling.
Mads Emil Dreyer is a Copenhagen-based composer whose work explores the dialogue between electroacoustic and acoustic entities. His compositions often emphasize lightness, brightness, and a sense of beauty and poetry.
Alex Hills is a London based composer. He has a strong interest in taking experimental approaches to historical materials, and much of his recent music explores the boundaries between transcription, pastiche and original composition.
Benjamin Oliver is a composer, conductor, and jazz pianist based in Southampton. He frequently collaborates with artists from other disciplines, including poet Luke Wright, theatre-maker Rachel Warr, filmmaker and audiovisual artist Moe Myat May Zarchi.
Tom Pauwels is a Brussels based guitarist and General Director of Ictus Ensemble. His interest in performance has led to collaborations with choreographers as Xavier Le Roy, Andros Zins-Browne and Maud Le Pladec.
Matthew Shlomowitz is a London based composer. His most recent work is The Big Idea, a one-hour monodrama for mezzo soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and Rubiks Collective (Melbourne), which he made with librettist Vid Simoniti.
Lisa Streich is a composer based in Gotland. Her distinctive works often feature stark contrasts, spectral harmonies, and the use of motorized instruments.
