The band Son Lux standing against a dark green tiled wall. They are dressed in formal or semi-formal attire, wearing glasses, and have different hairstyles and facial expressions.

SON LUX EXPANSION

Academy Award® and BAFTA-nominated band Son Lux has always embraced radical experimentation. Comprised of musician-composers Rafiq Bhatia, Ian Chang, and founder Ryan Lott, the self-described "sonic test kitchen" questions and explores what music can and should be. Featuring and upending electronic, soul, and pop influence, their aural explorations remain intimate in their intricacies and burst through any expectation of style.

Son Lux now takes its expansive sound to a grand scale with the world premiere of their next studio album adapted and arranged for a fully immersive symphony orchestra experience, arranged by GRAMMY Award Winner Jules Buckley. Integrated with a large ensemble, their maximalist work promises to electrify. The band rounds out the program with works curated by the group, creating a sonic dialogue highlighting their inspiration and revealing their place among the orchestral canon.

Currently seeking commissioning and presenting partner orchestras for the 2026-2027 Season.

From the start, Son Lux has operated as something akin to a sonic test kitchen. The Academy Award® and BAFTA-nominated band strives to question deeply held assumptions about how music is made and reconstruct it from a molecular level. What began as a solo project for founder Ryan Lott expanded in 2014, thanks to a kinship with Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia too strong to ignore. The trio strengthened their chemistry and honed their collective intuition while creating, releasing, and touring six recordings, including Brighter Wounds (2018) and triple album Tomorrows (2021). The result is a carefully cultivated musical language rooted in curiosity and balancing opposites that largely eschews genre and structural conventions. And yet, the band remains audibly indebted to iconoclastic artists in soul, hip-hop, and experimental improvisation who themselves carved new paths forward. Distilling these varied influences, Son Lux searches for equilibrium of raw emotional intimacy and meticulous electronic constructions. Son Lux has most recently scored the new Daniels film for A24, Everything Everywhere All at Once (March 2022). The full score album features new collaborations with Mitski, David Byrne, Randy Newman, and Moses Sumney, among others.

A rare and perfect mix of classical influences, electronica, and post-rock.

- BBC

Son Lux’s broader artistic ethos are rooted in the imperative of creation, so sprawling in its possibilities as to span an entire multiverse.

- PITCHFORK

SITS at the intersection of pop and classical, creating imaginative and complex music for every medium.

- NPR

SELECTED PERFORMANCE HISTORY

Three men sitting at an outdoor table with trees and houses in the background. The man on the left has curly blond hair and glasses, the man in the middle has dark hair and is wearing dark sunglasses, and the man on the right has wavy brown hair and is wearing large square glasses.

  • Performance with Son Lux

    2016

  • Live collaboration with Son Lux and Woodkid

    2016

  • Rafiq Bhatia in collaboration with filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Memoria, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives)

    2022

  • Performance with Ryan Lott and Shara Nova

    2013

  • Selected Rafiq Bhatia as one of the “Fifty for the Future” contributing composers alongside Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Jlin, Tanya Tagaq and Henry Threadgill

    2020

  • Ensemble commissioned Ryan Lott to contribute to this GRAMMY-winning release

    2015

  • Original composition written by Ryan Lott for the quartet

    2020

  • Commissioned both Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang to contribute to Koh’s GRAMMY Award-winning Alone Together project

    2020

  • Commissioned Ryan Lott to compose their entire award-winning release First

    2017

  • Enlisted Ryan Lott to write a new arrangement of “Peace Like a River”

    2018

Son Lux with Woodkid, Le Sinfonietta de Lausanne, and Le Chœur du Montreux Choral – Montreux Jazz Festival, 2016

Son Lux with horn players from the United States Marine Band – NPR Tiny Desk, 2015

Son Lux with Arooj Aftab and Bill Frisell – Big Ears Festival, 2023

CREATIVE PARTNERS

  • This Is Meru is Son Lux’s management company, founded by Michael Kaufmann and run by Michael and Hannah Houser. Michael has a rich history of cultural entrepreneurship, working collaboratively to make space for others to create and experience surprising beauty. He believes in the transformative power of art, its ability to ask critical questions, provoke meaningful conversations, and imagine new possibilities. Hannah brings with her a passion for all aspects of communication, branding, narrative identity, design, and business organization by way of marketing five of North America's top music festivals, managing a pool of marketing creatives, and assisting in the management of internationally renowned musicians.

  • Liquid Music is a leading producer of special projects in contemporary music, an internationally recognized laboratory for artists from across genre and disciplinary spectrums. This creative institution nurtures and realizes bold ideas from performers and composers, inspiring audiences to discover, learn and be transformed.

    Founded at The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2012, Liquid Music became independent in 2020, owned and operated by artistic director Kate Nordstrum who has been widely praised for her programmatic vision, panoramic tastes and “storied matchmaking” (Minneapolis Star Tribune). Through Liquid Music, Nordstrum has built a boundary-defying platform for collaboration and earned her reputation as “the most adventurous music curator in town” (MinnPost), “a presenter of rare initiative” (Star Tribune), and “Twin Cities’ curatorial powerhouse with international pull” (Minnesota Public Radio).

  • Outer/Most Agency have created a unique and distinguished reputation for working with artists who have the ability to navigate a wide-range of touring opportunities, as well as presenters/promoters who champion and foster an ever-evolving landscape of touring. Their artistic approach is rooted in independence and entrepreneurship and informed by 20 years of high-level agency expertise.

  • Grammy Award-winning composer, arranger, curator and conductor Jules Buckley has collaborated with some of music’s biggest names. He is Creative Artist in Association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a role that has seen him lead the orchestra in a range of innovative collaborations. He is also Honorary Conductor of the Netherlands-based Metropole Orkest, following a seven-year tenure as Chief Conductor (2013–20).

    Buckley has worked with artists including Quincy Jones, Arctic Monkeys, Basement Jaxx, John Cale, Benjamin Clementine, Anna Calvi, Laura Mvula, Massive Attack, Anoushka Shankar, Snarky Puppy, Stormzy and Stevie Wonder. Recent live projects include appearances with Jacob Collier and The National Symphony Orchestra, Quincy Jones and The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Laura Mvula with The Helsinki Philharmonic, Anoushka Shankar with The Britten Sinfonia and Moses Sumney with The BBC Symphony Orchestra.Item description