I have been performing solo since 2018. For me, the solo format offers a unique way of communicating musical ideas, outlining where you are as an improviser and most importantly indicates your future direction.
My debut solo record, Flux, was released in 2019 and followed by a seven-date UK release tour, including performances at The Vortex, IKLECTIK and YARMONICS Festival.
In 2025, I received a grant from Arts Council England to develop new approaches to solo percussion. The project focused on expanding my acoustic vocabulary through new objects, amplified techniques, mentoring and experimentation.
This period of research has shaped my current solo work, which explores percussion as an amplified performance system: a relationship between performer, material, microphone, speaker and space. Rather than treating amplification as a layer added after the fact, I am interested in how microphones, resonance, feedback, proximity and acoustic response can become part of the instrument itself.
The DYCP project has now concluded, but continues to inform my ongoing solo practice, including new recorded works and future performances developing this approach further.
“Emil played with such delicacy and precision, managing to draw the audience in to each nuanced rub, hit and stroke. Completely at home in the enormous acoustic shell of the Minster, Emil became fluent in the language of the church, responding to its creaks and distant footsteps, and toying with its joyful reverberation - a special moment, when distant church bells invited Emil to duet, provided a spell of glorious harmony with his surroundings both near and far”