Directed by European composer-soprano Triin Lellep, the Programme establishes the first sovereign, artist-led platform for composing — and qualifying the platforms that can perform — a new repertoire for human voice and humanoid stage bodies.
This is not a robot show.
This is not a technology demonstration.
This is not a single premiere.
It is the beginning of a new vocal stage language for the age when intelligence enters the stage as a body.
The integration of embodied artificial intelligence into the concert hall has begun. Recent milestones — the Dresdner Sinfoniker's Robotersinfonie at Hellerau, the appearance of humanoid soloists alongside the HKBU Symphony Orchestra in Hong Kong — have proven that synthetic entities can occupy the physical stage.
These early precedents also reveal a deeper, unanswered question. The humanoid bodies seen so far have performed within the existing aesthetic framework — executing human repertoire, algorithmic spectacle, or commercial brand activation. None has yet been composed for.
The Humanoid Repertoire Programme is a multi-year, artist-led initiative dedicated to the next compositional question. What is the authentic physical and acoustic repertoire of a synthetic body? What does a composer-soprano write for a body that is precise, strange, limited, beautiful, mechanical, present? What is the score that does not pretend the machine is a human, and does not pretend the human is a machine — but composes the meeting?
Operating independently of any single manufacturer, the Programme establishes a sovereign evaluation platform to select, test, and compose specifically for the world's most advanced bipedal humanoid platforms. Selected platforms will be invited into a closed technical residency in Autumn 2026, culminating in institutional premieres across European cultural venues.
Triin Lellep is not performing with a robot. She is writing the first repertoire for the moment when artificial intelligence is given a body, and asked — for the first time — to sing.
The work is not a performance with a robot. It is a meeting between two different kinds of presence — one that breathes, one that does not — held inside a single architecture of music.
On stage, a single humanoid body. A piano. A voice. Silence as material, not as pause. The humanoid does not imitate a dancer, a singer, a conductor. It is asked, instead, to be itself — precise, strange, limited, present — and the composition is written around what that body can authentically do.
The composer-soprano holds the centre. The humanoid is not an accompanist and not a partner in the human sense. It is a second order of presence, with its own time, its own quietness, its own weight. The score lives in the space between the two.
Some passages are sung in the open. Some are sung directly toward the synthetic body. Some moments contain only a gesture and a breath. Recorded electronics, when used, are sparse — chosen for the way they let acoustic instruments and unamplified voice remain the dominant carriers of meaning. The new instrument is the body itself.
This is the beginning of a repertoire, not a single piece. The first work is in development as the foundational statement. Subsequent works will extend the language across longer forms, multiple humanoid bodies, and larger ensembles of acoustic instruments.
The work begins at human scale. It is composed first for rooms where the voice carries without amplification — where the audience can hear the breath, the silence, and the precise mechanical quiet of the synthetic body. From that foundation, the language extends outward across three concentric scales of presentation, each composed for its acoustic and architectural reality.
The work is composed and directed by Triin Lellep. The technical and engineering architecture — robotics integration, motion authoring, acoustic measurement, stage systems — is developed by the Studio and its qualified partners, through the Programme's residency and platform-evaluation process.
Leading robotics developers and platform architects are invited to submit their vanguard humanoid platforms for evaluation. To be considered for the Residency, hardware must demonstrate readiness across the following vectors. Submissions are evaluated against concert-grade performance environments — not commercial showrooms, not retail activations, not trade shows. The bar is the unamplified European concert hall.
Complete the form below to submit your platform for qualification consideration. We respond within 14 working days with next steps for the Autumn 2026 residency shortlist. All submissions are reviewed in confidence.
Your platform submission has been received. We respond within 14 working days with next steps for the Autumn 2026 residency shortlist. All submissions are reviewed in confidence.
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