Soundbeam thrills packed house on London's South Bank

This sold-out evening hosted by Jarvis Cocker and with Charles Hazlewood conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra, Electronica III at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on June 9th featured an exciting and varied programme of contemporary music, including Soundbeam originator Edward Williams' Life on Earth Suite, with Soundbeam-controlled electronics masterfully performed by Martin Kiszko. The seamless meshing of orchestral and electronic sound has rarely been so convincingly realised - or so beautifully played. Soundbeam's first entry in the piece after the lush orchestral introduction proved to be a genuinely jaw-dropping moment for the audience in the packed auditorium.

Williams began work on the music for David Attenborough's groundbreaking 13-part Life on Earth natural history series for BBC TV in 1978. The score included significant electronics - generated largely at the time by sounds generated and samples manipulated by the EMS VCS3 synthesiser. In the concert Kiszko's Soundbeam playing revives and articulates this electronic music, extracted from the original recordings, in real time.

Electronica III will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 2pm on the 3rd July.