The 12th
Planet Tree Music Festival

Marking its twelfth edition, the Planet Tree Music Festival returns to Colet House this November for three extraordinary weekends of adventurous, immersive, and boundary-crossing music. Founded in 1996 to champion new tonal music, the festival has become one of London's most singular destinations for listeners drawn to the meeting points of tradition and innovation, meditation and virtuosity, sound and light.

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Two all-night concerts invite audiences into the deep, transformative territory that only sustained listening can open. One features a full gong bath performed by an ensemble of musicians — an enveloping wash of resonance designed to be experienced as much bodily as musically. The second is a raga-based night concert by the acclaimed South Indian vocalist Manickam Yogeswaran and fellow musicians, drawing on the ancient Carnatic and Hindustani traditions of nocturnal ragas whose emotional and spiritual character is shaped by the hours themselves.

 

Two marathon concerts showcase pianistic feats of endurance and imagination from two of the most compelling figures in the contemporary long-form piano tradition — **Abel Sánchez Aguilera** and **Nicolas Horvath** — each bringing their own vision of what sustained musical attention can reveal.

 

Light sculptures illuminate many of the festival's events, transforming the spaces of Colet House into visual companions to the sonic explorations and reflecting the festival's long-standing commitment to the unity of sound, vision, and spirit. **Audio-visual installations** running throughout the festival offer immersive spaces to inhabit between performances — places to absorb, decompress, dream, and prepare the ear for what comes next.

 

World and UK premieres feature works by Kaikhosru Sorabji, Lawrence Ball, James D'Angelo, Alan Hovhaness, a distinguished group of Spanish composers, and many more — an unusually broad and adventurous programme spanning the mystical, the mathematical, the meditative, and the maximalist.