Thursday 20 November marked our return to the EFG London Jazz Festival with two electrifying world premieres: Ashkan Layegh’s Ephemerality and Recurrence and Marius Neset’s Changes. Together they formed an evening that asked how music can reimagine itself in real time.
Layegh’s Ephemerality and Recurrence, the final work from our Writing the Future 5 composers, brought together a string quartet, the Phemo Quartet, and a “screen quartet” of visuals. Rather than pairing sound and image, the piece set three independent layers in motion, revealing patterns that continually appeared, dissolved, and reconfigured.
Neset’s Changes, written for himself, Anton Eger, and five Sinfonietta players, traced a fluid journey through eight connected movements. Balancing composition and improvisation, the work captured the constant motion of life — shifting rhythms, vivid colours, and moments of spontaneous dialogue. This performance also marks the next chapter in our collaboration: hear Changes again as we tour Norway in January, with three dates across the country.
From kinetic jazz energy to intricate chamber textures, from multimedia layering to moments of explosive clarity, the night captured a spirit of experimentation and collaboration. It closed to a standing ovation – a testament not only to the power of these two new works, but to the vibrant cross-genre spirit at the heart of the EFG London Jazz Festival.
c Monika S. Jakubowska & Mark Prentice Whitney
The instrumentalists occasionally catching Neset’s freewheeling lines created moments of magic, fleeting doublings that coloured the saxophone sound Jack Marley, The Cusp Magazine
Layegh’s work found an innovative musical approach to such integration, locating commonality between a maximalist avant-garde jazz group improvisation sound and the micropolyphonal textures you’d find in post-serialist works by composers like Ligeti or Xenakis. Jack Marley, The Cusp Magazine
Published: 25 Nov 2025