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 followed by a UK 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. 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 separate layer, 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 (2027) and future performances developing this approach further.
From the 3-11th August I will be doing a solo residency at Neimënster Abbey in Luxembourg where I will be developing this project further, with open studio days on the 8th and 9th. More info on the project here
“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”