Mark Fell & Mohammad Reza Mortazavi + Hanne Lippard & Renato Grieco
New works from two collaborative duos whose instrumental dialogues foreground rhythm and the material conditions of sound.
Doors: 7pm
| Dates | Sat 28 Mar 2026 |
| Times | 7.15pm |
| Space | Lancaster Rooms, New Wing |
| Price | £20 (General) £15 (Concessions) |
Mark Fell & Mohammad Reza Mortazavi
Renowned for his rigorous and conceptual approach to electronic music and sound art, multidisciplinary artist, composer, and theorist Mark Fell’s electronic music and sound art explores the limits of structure, rhythm, and perception through a blend of computational systems, philosophical inquiry, and cultural critique.
For Assembly, Fell plays alongside virtuoso percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi. Known for playing traditional Persian instruments such as the tombak and daf, Mortazavi is recognised as one of the most prominent players in Iran, recording and performing regular concerts the world over. Together, they present a UK debut performance of a complex and ecstatic rhythmic collaboration combining electronics and Persian percussion.
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Hanne Lippard & Renato Grieco
Hanne Lippard and Renato Grieco present a newly commissioned performance work stemming from research into the field of language and voice; a shared interest between each of their individual practices as both artists and musicians.
Developed during a three-month residency at Somerset House Studios with the support of Goethe-Institut London, Lippard and Grieco’s Assembly performance expands their research into voice, particularly through polyphonic layering and tonal experimentation, aiming to find intersections between semantic logic and music, often diffusing the distinction.
The new work takes form as a theatrical script of overlapping dialogues and monologues, interspersed with musical components and live viola da gamba, a Renaissance and Baroque era stringed instrument. Lippard and Grieco will go on to present a further development of their Assembly premiere at CTM Festival in 2027.
Commissioned by Somerset House Studios and Goethe-Institut London in partnership with CTM Festival Berlin.
Biographies
Mark Fell
Mark Fell is a multidisciplinary artist, composer, and theorist based in Rotherham, UK. Renowned for his rigorous and conceptual approach to electronic music and sound art, Fell’s work explores the limits of structure, rhythm, and perception through a blend of computational systems, philosophical inquiry, and cultural critique.
Emerging from the experimental music scene in Sheffield during the 1990s, Fell first gained prominence through his collaborations with Mat Steel as SND, a duo whose sparse, algorithmic techno helped define a new minimalism in digital sound. As a solo artist, he has released influential works on labels such as Raster-Noton, Editions Mego, and The Death of Rave, with key albums like Multistability and UL8 establishing him as a critical voice in the evolution of electronic composition.
Beyond recorded music, Fell’s practice spans installation, performance, curation, and academic research. His multi-speaker sound environments, often rejecting illusionistic spatialization, foreground a “non-representational” aesthetic that challenges conventions of immersive media. These works have been featured in major international institutions including the Serralves Foundation, Pirelli HangarBicocca, and V‑A‑C Foundation. In 2022 Fell published ‘Structure and Synthesis, The Anatomy of Practice’ with Urbanomic press, bringing together the various strands of his philosophical and political thinking into an analysis of creative practice.
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi was born in 1979 in Isfahan, two months after the revolution in Iran. He has been living in Germany as a musician and composer for over 20 years.
The diverse sound of tombak and daf has always fascinated Mortazavi. It connects him with an understanding of music and movement that is as multifaceted as it is constantly evolving. His musical ideas transcend traditional techniques and ways of playing both instruments. Mortazavi describes finding a balance between concentration and letting go as the core element of his musical work: a constantly changing movement in which the boundaries of body and mind dissolve into one another. Mortazavi directs his focus exclusively on music, detached from the instrument and national-cultural narratives, in pursuit of the idea of a universal music in which something human connects in a profound way.
Hanne Lippard & Renato Grieco
The collaborative project by Hanne Lippard and Renato Grieco commenced in 2025 during Lippard’s residency at Villa Massimo in Rome as well as their concurrent residency at Fondazione Morra in Napoli.
Consistent with their individual artistic practices, the collaborative work of the duo centers on musical compositions predicated on speech and language. The outcome is a harmonic interplay between Grieco's instrumental humanism, the acoustic vocal timbre of the viola da gamba, and the distinctive sonic attributes of Lippard's linguistic practice. Working with methods of reduction rather than opulence in both tonal composition and rhetoric, their repertoire presents itself as a novel synthesis between melody and diction.