Tag Archives: hannah williams

Hannah Williams & Benjamin Oliver: Love Letters [with AI]

‘British soul sensation’ Hannah Williams (vocals) and composer Benjamin Oliver (piano/electronics) perform music inspired by, or created with, AI.

The programme features cabaret number How Could You Prefer It To Me? by Bella Barlow and Drew Crawford, Anna Appleby’s ‘Reservoir’, selections from Jennifer Walshe’s ‘A Late Anthology of Early Music Vol. 1: Ancient to Renaissance’ and a new version of Oliver’s song cycle ‘Love Letters’.

Premiered and recorded by Williams and Riot Ensemble in 2023, ‘Love Letters’ includes melancholic, absurd and dramatic expressions of love made with LovelaceGPT, an AI text generation model developed by University of Southampton researchers.

‘Love Letters’ reworked

Been working on a new version of Love Letters for me to play (piano/electronics) with Hannah Williams. Had a good first rehearsal yesterday on it. I need to practise! We will play the premiere at a new University of Southampton festival focused around AI Arts on 2 June alongside music by Anna Appleby and Drew Crawford/Bella Barlow. Music by Jennifer Walshe will also feature.

The Love Letters [with AI] project has been featured as a research highlight too: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/research/highlights/music-ai-combine-for-quirky-performance

Love Letters [with AI]

Was a total joy working with the amazing Hannah Williams, awesome musicians from Riot Ensemble and a brilliant research team from the University of Southampton on the ‘Love Letters [with AI]’ project. Ash Sealy (@whatabouttheash) captured the London gig fantastically. I’m really proud of this project and especially my new 7-song cycle Love Letters. We recorded it between the two performances too and the cycle will feature on my portrait album. Too Many Sweets, next year…

Riot Ensemble with Hannah Williams & Stephanie Lamprea: LOVE LETTERS [WITH AI]

Composer Benjamin Oliver and Riot Ensemble present contemporary works that explore creative applications of artificial intelligence (AI).


‘British soul sensation’ Hannah Williams joins forces with a new music superstar Riot Ensemble quartet to premiere Benjamin Oliver’s song cycle LOVE LETTERS. The work includes melancholic, absurd and dramatic expressions of love made with LovelaceGPT, a new AI text generation model developed by University of Southampton researchers.

AI music and text generation, as well as sound processing, feature in five distinctive works by leading young composers : Rob Laidlow, Zakiya Leeming, Anna Appleby, Oliver Sellwood and Megan Steinberg. The ‘startingly gifted’ Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea guests for three vocal pieces.

The LOVE LETTERS [WITH AI] project is supported by the University of Southampton Web Science Institute & Department of Music.

Riot Ensemble with Hannah Williams & Stephanie Lamprea: LOVE LETTERS [WITH AI]

Composer Benjamin Oliver and Riot Ensemble present contemporary works that explore creative applications of artificial intelligence (AI).


‘British soul sensation’ Hannah Williams joins forces with a new music superstar Riot Ensemble quartet to premiere Benjamin Oliver’s song cycle LOVE LETTERS. The work includes melancholic, absurd and dramatic expressions of love made with LovelaceGPT, a new AI text generation model developed by University of Southampton researchers.

AI music and text generation, as well as sound processing, feature in five distinctive works by leading young composers : Rob Laidlow, Zakiya Leeming, Anna Appleby, Oliver Sellwood and Megan Steinberg. The ‘startingly gifted’ Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea guests for three vocal pieces.

The LOVE LETTERS [WITH AI] project is supported by the University of Southampton Web Science Institute & Department of Music.

LOVE LETTERS [WITH AI]

I’m excited to have received some funding from the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton to lead an interdisciplinary project exploring artificial intelligence language generation of song texts. The ultimate outcome will be a new song cycle for British soul sensation Hannah Williams and a superstar quartet of Riot Ensemble players, which we’ll premiere in Southampton and London in July 2023!! More soon!