Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy: 'Music is like a workout for the soul'

Evening Standard

12-06-2025

I ask whether they notice the coughs, the wrappers rustling in the hall? 'The energy of the audience is key,' Tsoy says. 'We saw this during Covid, playing for broadcasts from empty venues. It was excruciatingly difficult, almost impossible.' The stage, he adds, 'is not a physical stage. It is the attention of people'. That attention is being reshaped by digital technology — a subject of Tsoy's recent project, an homage to Richard Serra's The Matter of Time installation at the Guggenheim Bilbao. Digital life tends to flatten time, making each moment indistinguishable from the next, but Serra's space, Tsoy says, 'changes the way you feel time. It stretches it, restoring its texture and presence. I want to make music that helps shift your inner clock, to slow you down.' Kolesnikov laughs. 'Art is a kind of harmless drug, a magic mushroom,' he says. 'It can warp time.'